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SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS 

AND OTHER WRITINGS 



GONE WEST 

BY A SOLDIER DOCTOR 



FOUR-DIMENSIONAL VISTAS 

BY CLAUDE BRAGDON 



THE DEAD HAVE NEVER DIED 

BY EDWARD C. RAXDALL 



At all booksellers 



NEW YORK: ALFRED • A • KNOPF 

220 WEST FORTY-SECOND STREET 



SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS 

AND OTHER WRITINGS 
By JACOB BOHME 

NEWLY TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH BY 

JOHN ROLLESTON EARLE, U M.A. 




NEW YORK 
ALFRED • A • KNOPF 

MCMXX 



COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY 
ALFRED A. KNOPF, Inc. 



*fl> 






MAR -3 1920 ' 



PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 



5CI.A559903 



AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO THE 
READER 

We have written this work, not for the irrational 
animals who, in their exterior, have the form of 
man, but in their image, in spirit, are evil and wild 
beasts, which is disclosed and exhibited by their 
properties; but for the image of man, for those 
who are budding forth out of the animal image 
with a human image that belongs to God's king- 
dom, and who would fain live and grow in the hu- 
man image, in the right man. Those who are often 
and much hindered by the contrarious life, and thus 
are involved in the mixed life, and travail in desire 
for the birth of the holy life: for them are these 
writings written. And we bid them not regard it 
as impossible to discern and to know such mystery; 
and we give them this to consider of in a similitude. 
Let them imagine a life which is the outcome and 
growth of all lives, and is mixed. But let them also 
imagine another life to grow in it from all the lives, 
which, though it had grown from all the lives, was 
free from all the other lives, and yet possessed all the 
essential properties of those lives. This other new 
life (let them imagine) is illuminated with the light, 
and only in itself; so that it could behold all the 
other lives, and they (the other lives) could not see 
nor apprehend the new life. Thus is every one, 



6 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS 

who, out of the mixed life, evil and good, is born 
again in and of God. This new image, born in the 
life of God, beholds all the natural lives, and noth- 
ing is strange or difficult to it; for it beholds only 
its root from which it grew. As a fair flower grows 
out of the rough earth, which is not like the earth 
but declares by its beauty the power of the earth, 
and how it is mixed of good and evil; so also is 
every man, who, out of the animal, wild, earthly 
nature and quality, is born again so as to become 
the right image of God. 

For those who are a growth of such a kind, and 
are shooting forth into the fair lily in the kingdom 
of God, and are in process of birth, have we written 
this book ; that they should strengthen their essences 
therein, bud in the life of God, and grow and bear 
fruit in the tree of paradise. And seeing all the 
children of God grow in this tree, and each is a 
twig of this same tree, we have wished to impart 
to our twigs and fellow-branches in our tree, in 
which we all are, and from which we all grow, our 
sap, savour and essence, that our tree of paradise 
may become great, and that we may rejoice one 
with another. And we would urge all children, who 
are thus growing in this tree, friendly to ponder 
that each branch and twig helps to shelter the other 
from the storm, and we commend ourselves unto 
their love and growth. 



CONTENTS 



SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS 

PAGE 

Author's Preface to the Reader 5 

The First Point. Of the springing of the three Prin- 
ciples, etc. 13 

Chapter I. Of the first growth and life from the 

first Principle, etc. 13 

Chapter II. Of the proprium of the principle, etc. 31 

The Second Point. Of the mixed tree of evil and 

good, etc. 47 

Chapter III. 47 

The Third Point. Of the origin of contrariety in 

growth, etc. 54 

Chapter IV. 54 

The Fourth Point. How the holy and good tree of 
eternal life grows through and out of all the growths 
of the three principles, etc. 64 

Chapter V. 64 

Chapter VI. 70 

The Fifth Point. How a life may perish in the tree of 

life, etc. 76 

Chapter VII. 76 

Chapter VIII. Of the right human essence from 

God's essence 90 

7 



8 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS 

The Sixth Point. Of the life of darkness, wherein the 

devils dwell, etc. 99 

Chapter IX. 99 
Chapter X. Of the four elements of the devil and 

of the dark world, etc. 112 

SIX MYSTICAL POINTS 

Preface 127 

The First Point. On the blood and water of the soul 129 

The Second Point. On the election of grace, etc. 131 

The Third Point. On sin, etc. 135 

The Fourth Point. How Christ will deliver up the 

kingdom to his Father 141 

The Fifth Point. On Magic. What Magic is, etc. 143 

The Sixth Point. On Mystery. What it is 148 

ON THE EARTHLY AND HEAVENLY 
MYSTERY 

The First Text 153 

The Second Text 154 

The Third Text 155 

The Fourth Text 156 

The Fifth Text 159 

The Sixth Text 162 

The Seventh Text 164 

The Eighth Text 168 

The Ninth Text 172 



CONTENTS 9 

PAGE 

ON THE DIVINE INTUITION 

Chapter I. What God is, etc 177 

Chapter II. Of the mind, will, and thoughts of human 

life, etc. 191 

Chapter III. Of the natural ground, etc. 202 

Chapter IV. Of the In and Out, etc. 219 



SEX PUNCTA THEOSOPHICA 

OR 
HIGH AND DEEP GROUNDING OF 

SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS 

BY 

JACOB BOHME 

AN OPEN GATE OF ALL THE SECRETS OF LIFE 

WHEREIN THE CAUSES OF ALL BEINGS 

BECOME KNOWN 



WritteD in the year 1620 



THE FIRST POINT 

Of the springing of the three principles 
What sort of tree or life each generates 
in itself and from itself. How we are 
to investigate and know the ground of 

NATURE 

CHAPTER I 

Of the first growth and life from the first Principle. 
That we are so to ponder and consider it, as if it 
stood alone and were not mixed with the other, 
— what its power might be. That, therefore, 
we are not to think of it as being such that it is 
one and united in a single figure or creation; 
but [we are to think of it so~\ that we learn to 
explore and fathom the centrum naturae, and 
to distinguish the divine Essence from Nature. 

1. We see and find that every life is essential, 
and find moreover that it is based on will; for will 
is the driving of the essences. 

2. It is thus, as if a hidden fire lay in the will, 
and the will continually uplifting itself towards the 
fire wished to awaken and kindle it. 

3. For we understand that every will without 
the awakening of the fiery essences is an impotency, 
as it were dumb without life, wherein is no feeling, 



14 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS 

understanding or substantiality. It resembles 
only a shadow without substance; for it has no 
conductor, but sinks down and suffers itself to be 
driven and led like a dead thing, — such as is to be 
compared to a shadow, which is led along without 
essence. 

4. Thus an essential will is a dumb existence 
without comprehension or life; and yet is a figure 
in the unfathomable eternal nothing, for it is 
attached to the corporeal things. 

5. Now, as the will without essence is dumb and 
without being, so in the essence it is a being and 
image according to the essences, which is fashioned 
after the essences ; for the life of the will is generated 
from the essences. 

6. Thus life is the essences' son, and the will, 
wherein life's figure stands, is the essences' father; 
for no essence can arise without will. For in the 
will is originated desire, in which the essences take 
their rise. 

7. Seeing then the first will is an ungrounded- 
ness, to be regarded as an eternal nothing, we 
recognize it to be like a mirror, wherein one sees 
his own image; like a life, and yet it is no life, but 
a figure of life and of the image belonging to life. 

8. Thus we recognize the eternal Unground out 
of Nature to be like a mirror. For it is like an eye 
which sees, and yet conducts nothing in the seeing 
wherewith it sees; for seeing is without essence, 
although it is generated from essence, viz. from the 
essential life. 

9. We are able then to recognize that the eternal 



THE FIRST POINT 15 

Unground out of Nature is a will, like an eye where- 
in Nature is hidden; like a hidden fire that burns 
not, which exists and also exists not. It is not a 
spirit, but a form of spirit, like the reflection in the 
mirror. For all the form of a spirit is seen in the 
reflection or in the mirror, and yet there is nothing 
which the eye or mirror sees; but its seeing is in 
itself, for there is nothing before it that were deeper 
there. It is like a mirror which is a container of 
the aspect of Nature, and yet comprehends not 
Nature, as Nature comprehends not the form of the 
image in the mirror. 

10. And thus one is free from the other, and yet 
the mirror is truly the container of the image. It 
embraces the image, and yet is powerless in respect 
of the form, for it cannot retain it. For if the 
image depart from the mirror, the mirror is a clear 
brightness, and its brightness is a nothing; and 
yet all the form of Nature is hidden therein as a 
nothing; and yet veritably is, but not in essence. 

11. And so it is to be understood concerning the 
hidden eternal wisdom of God, which resembles an 
eternal eye without essence. It is the unground, 
and yet sees all; all has been hidden in it from 
eternity, and therefrom it has its seeing. But it is 
not essential, as in the mirror the brightness is 
not essential, which yet embraces all that appears 
before it. 

12. Secondly, this is to be understood also of the 
eternal will, which likewise is without essence, as 
also of the Spirit of God. For no seeing is without 
spirit, neither is any spirit without seeing. And 



16 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS 

we understand thus, that seeing shines forth from 
the spirit, and is its eye or mirror, wherein the 
will is revealed. For seeing makes a will, as the 
unground of the deep without number knows to find 
no ground nor limit; hence its mirror goeth into 
itself, and makes a ground in itself, that is a will. 

13. Thus the mirror of the eternal eye shines 
forth in the will, and generates to itself another 
eternal ground within itself. This is its centre or 
heart, from which the seeing continually takes its 
rise from eternity, and through which the will be- 
comes moving and directive, namely of that which 
the centre brings forth. 

14. For all is comprised in the will, and is an 
essence, which, in the eternal Unground, eternally 
takes its rise in itself, enters into itself, grasps 
itself in itself, and makes the centre in itself; but 
with that which is grasped passes out of itself, 
manifests itself in the brightness of the eye, and 
thus shines forth out of the essence in itself and 
from itself. It is its own, and yet also in com- 
parison to Nature is as a nothing (understand, in 
comparison to palpable being, so to speak) ; though 
it is all, and all arises from thence. 

15. And herein we understand the eternal Es- 
sence of the triad of the Deity, with the un- 
fathomable wisdom. For the eternal will, which 
comprehends the eye or the mirror, wherein lies 
the eternal seeing as its wisdom, is Father. And 
that which is eternally grasped in wisdom, the 
grasp comprehending a basis or centre in itself, 
passing out of the ungroundness into a ground, 



THE FIRST POINT 17 

is Son or Heart; for it is the Word of life, or its 
essentiality, in which the will shines forth with 
lustre. 

16. And the going within itself to the centre of 
the ground is Spirit; for it is the finder, who from 
eternity continually finds where there is nothing. 
It goes forth again from the centre of the ground, 
and seeks in the will. And then the mirror of the 
eye, viz. the Father's and Son's wisdom, becomes 
manifest; and wisdom stands accordingly before 
the Spirit of God, who in it manifests the unground. 
For its virtue, wherein the colours of the wonders 
shine forth, is revealed from the Father of the 
eternal will through the centre of his Heart or 
Ground by the forthgoing Spirit. 

17. For it (wisdom) is that which is uttered, 
which the Father utters out of the centre of the 
Heart by the Holy Spirit, and stands in divine 
forms and images, in the ocular view of the Holy 
Tri-unity of God ; but as a virgin without bringing 
forth. It generates not the colours and figures 
which shine forth in it, and are revealed in the 
ground and essence; but all is together an eternal 
Magia, and dwells with the centre of the heart in 
itself, and by the spirit goes forth from the centre 
out of itself, and manifests itself in the eye of virgin 
wisdom endlessly. 

18. For as the essence of the Deity has no ground 
from which it arises or proceeds, so also the Will- 
spirit has no ground where it might rest, where 
there were a place or limit, but is called Wonder- 
ful. And its word or heart, from which it goes 



18 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS 

forth, is called the eternal Power of the Deity ; and 
the will which generates the heart and the power 
in itself is called eternal Counsel. 

19. Thus the essence of the Deity is everywhere 
in the deep of the unground, like as a wheel or eye, 
where the beginning hath always the end ; and there 
is no place found for it, for it is itself the place 
of all beings and the fulness of all things, and yet 
is apprehended or seen by nothing. For it is an 
eye in itself, as Ezekiel the prophet saw this in a 
figure at the introduction of the spirit of his will into 
God, when his spiritual figure was introduced into 
the wisdom of God by the Spirit of God; there he 
attained the vision, and in no other way can that be. 

The Second Text. 

20. We understand, then, that the divine Essence 
in threefoldness in the unground dwells in itself, 
but generates to itself a ground within itself, viz. 
the eternal word or heart, which is the centre or 
goal of rest in the Deity; though this is not to 
be understood as to being, but as to a threefold 
spirit, where each is the cause of the birth of the 
other. 

21. And this threefold spirit is not measurable, 
divisible or fathomable; for there is no place found 
for it, and it is at the same time the unground of 
eternity, which gives birth to itself within itself in 
a ground. And no place or position can be con- 
ceived or found where the spirit of the tri-unity is 
not present, and in every being; but hidden to the 



THE FIRST POINT 19 

being, dwelling in itself, as an essence that at once 
fills all and yet dwells not in being, but itself has a 
being in itself; as we are to reflect concerning the 
ground and unground, how the two are to be under- 
stood in reference to each other. 

22. Thus, we understand eternity: (1) How it 
was before the times of the creation of this world. 

(2) What the divine Essence is in itself without a 
principle. (3) What the eternal beginning in the 
unground is, and the eternal end in its own ground 
generated in itself, viz. the centre to the word;, 
which word is the centre itself. (4) And yet the 
eternal birth of the Word in the will in the mirror 
of the eternal wisdom, in the virgin, continually 
takes place from eternity to eternity without a 
genetrix or without bringing forth. 

23. And in this virgin of the wisdom of God 
the eternal principle is as a hidden fire, which is 
recognized as in a mirror by its colours. It has 
been known from eternity to eternity in figure, 
and is known also thus to all eternity in the eternal 
origin, in wisdom. 

24. And in this mirror, where the principle is 
disclosed from the eternal Unground, the essence 
of the three principles, according to the likeness of 
the holy triad, has been seen with their wonders as 
in an unfathomable deep, and that from eternity. 

25. We are now to understand that the first 
Principle is magical in origin ; for it is generated in 
desire, in the will. Hence its craving and contra- 
will to bring forth is also magical, namely to bring 
forth the second Principle. 



20 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS 

26. And whereas in the first and second principle 
only a spirit without comprehensible [corporeal] 
being is understood ; yet there is also the craving to 
give birth furthermore to the third Principle, where- 
in the spirit of the two principles might rest and 
manifest itself in similitude. 

27. And though each principle has its centre, the 
first principle stands in magical quality, and its 
centre is fire, which cannot subsist without sub- 
stance; therefore its hunger and desire is after 
substance. 

28. And in regard to the first principle, if we 
speak only of one (though it is not single and soli- 
tary) , we are to understand that the unfathomable 
will in the centre of the unground, in which the 
eternal Word is continually generated from eter- 
nity, is desirous ; for the will desires the centre, viz. 
the word or heart. 

29. Secondly, it desires that the heart should be 
manifest. For in the unground there is no mani- 
festation, but an eternal nothingness;; a stillness 
without being or colours, neither any virtue — (but 
in Desire colours, power and virtue come to be) — 
and is thus hidden in itself, and were eternally not 
manifest ; for there would be no light, splendour or 
majesty, but a threefold spirit in itself, which were 
without source (Qual) of any being. 

30. And thus we are to understand the essence of 
the deepest Deity, without and beyond Nature. 

31. Further, we are to understand that the 
eternal will of the Deity desires to manifest itself 
from its own ground in the light of Majesty, where- 



THE FIRST POINT 21 

by we apprehend the first will of the Father to the 
Son and to the light of Majesty to be desirous. 
And that in two ways : The first way to the centre 
of the Word; the second to Light or manifestation 
of the Word. And we find that every desire is 
attrahent, though in the unground there is nothing 
that can be drawn; hence the desire draws itself, 
and impregnates the other will of the Father, which 
imaginates for the light of Majesty from the centre 
of his word or heart. 

32. Now is the heart pregnant with Light, and 
the first will pregnant with Nature; and yet were 
none of this manifest, if the principle were not 
generated. 

33. The Father generates from the first will the 
first Principle, as the nature which in fire attains 
to the highest perfection; and then he generates 
the second Principle in and from the other will to 
the Word, in that he desires the manifestation of the 
Word in the light of Majesty. Thus the fire of the 
second principle in the light of Majesty is a satis- 
fying or appeasing of the first will : namely gentle- 
ness, which is opposed to the fire of the first prin- 
ciple, and quenches its fierce wrath, and brings it 
into an essential substance as into an eternal life. 
But the fire is hidden in the light, and gives to the 
light its power, strength and might, so that together 
there is an eternal union, and one without the other 
would not be. 



22 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS 

Of the first Principle in itself; what it is 
(singly) in itself. 

34. We are to consider Desire; for every desire 
attracts what is in the desiring will. 

35. God, however, desires only light, viz. the 
lustre from his heart, that he may shine forth in 
wisdom, and the whole God thus be manifest in 
himself, and by the forth-going Spirit out of him- 
self, in the virgin of his wisdom ; and that there be 
an eternal perfect joy, delight and satisfaction in 
him. 

36. Now this can be accomplished in no other 
way than through fire, where the will is brought into 
the deepest sharpness of omnipotence, as it becomes 
consuming in fire. Contrariwise, light is a gentle- 
ness of the genetrix of the omni-substantiality. 

37. But fire must have a genetrix to its origin 
and life, and here it appears in two lives and sources. 
And they are rightly called two principles, although 
there is only one; but it is a twofold source in one 
being, and is in respect of the source regarded as 
two beings, as is to be seen in fire and light. 

38. We now consider Desire, and find that it is 
a stern attraction, like an eternal elevation or 
motion. For it draws itself into itself, and makes 
itself pregnant, so that from the thin freedom 
where there is nothing a darkness is produced. 
For the desiring will becomes by the drawing-in 
thick and full, although there is nothing but 
darkness. 

39. The first will would now be free from the 



THE FIRST POINT 23 

darkness, for it desires light, and yet cannot thus 
attain it. For the greater the desire is for freedom, 
the greater becomes the attraction and the sting 
of the essences, which take their rise in the drawing 
or desire. 

40. Thus the will draws the more strongly into 
itself, and its pregnancy becomes the greater, and 
yet the darkness cannot comprehend the centre of 
the word or heart of the ternary; for this centre is 
a degree deeper in itself, and yet is a band. 

41. But the first will, in which the gestation of 
Nature takes place, is deeper still than the centre 
of the word, for it arises from the eternal Unground 
or Nothing; and thus the centre of the heart is 
shut up in the midst, the first will of the Father 
labouring to the birth of fire. 

42. Now, we are to understand that in the stern 
attraction a very unyielding substance and being is 
produced. And so then substance from eternity 
has its origin ; for the drawing gives sting, and the 
drawn gives hardness, matter from nothing, a 
substance and essentiality. The sting of the draw- 
ing dwells now in this essentiality, pierces and 
breaks; and all this from the desiring will which 
draws. 

43. And here we are to recognize two forms of 
Nature, viz. sour (astringent), that is Desire, and 
then the sting, which makes in the desire a breaking 
and piercing, whence feeling arises, that is, bitter, 
and is the second form of Nature, a cause and 
origin of the essences in Nature. 

44. Now the first will is not satisfied with this, 



24 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS 

nor set at rest, but is brought thereby into a very 
great anguish; for it desires freedom in light, and 
yet, however, there is no brightness in freedom. 
Then it falls into terrible anguish, and so uplifts 
the desire for freedom, that the anguish, as a dying 
or sinking down through death, introduces its will 
into freedom out of the breaking, piercing and 
powerful attracting. 

45. Here, then, we understand the will in two 
ways: One, which rises in fierceness to generation 
of the wrath-fire ; the other, which imaginates after 
the centre of the word, and, passing out of the 
anguish, as through a dying, sinks into the free life ; 
and thus brings with it a life out of the torment 
of anguish into freedom, so that the eternal Un- 
ground is recognized as a life, and from the Nothing 
an eternal life springs. 

46. Seeing then the first movement of the will 
rises to the birth of fire, we recognize it as the first 
nature, viz. the Father's nature in fierce wrath; 
and the other entrance of the will into freedom, 
into the centre of the heart, we recognize as the 
Divine Nature, as the life in light, in the power of 
the Deity. 

47. It is now clear what the first will to fire 
operates and effects, viz. stern, hard, bitter, and 
great anguish, which is the third form of Nature; 
for anguish is as the centre where life and will 
eternally take their rise. For the will would be 
free from the great anguish, and yet cannot. It 
would flee, and yet is held by the sourness (astrin- 
gency) ; and the greater the will for flight becomes, 



THE FIRST POINT 25 

the greater becomes the bitter sting of the essences 
and plurality. 

48. It being unable then to flee or ascend, it turns 
as a wheel. And here the essences become mixed, 
and the plurality of essences enters into a mixed 
will, which is rightly called the eternal mind, where 
plurality in numberless essences is comprised in a 
mind, where always from an essence a will again 
may arise according to the property of that essence, 
whence the eternal wonders spring. 

49. Seeing then the great and strong mind of the 
form of anguish goes thus in itself as a wheel, and 
continually breaks the stern attraction, and by the 
sting brings into plurality of essences; but in 
anguish, in the wheel disposes again into a one, as 
into a mind: therefore now the anguishful life is 
born, viz. Nature, where there is a moving, driving, 
fleeing and holding, as also a feeling, tasting and 
hearing. And yet it is not a right life, but only 
a Nature-life without a principle. For it has no 
growth, but is like a frenzy or madness, where 
something goes whirling in itself as a wheel, where 
indeed there is a bond of life, but without under- 
standing or knowledge; for it knows not itself. 

50. Further, we are to inquire concerning the 
other will of the eternal Father which is called 
God, which in the centre of its heart desires light 
and the manifestation of the triad in wisdom. This 
will is set or directed towards the centrum naturae, 
for through Nature must the splendour of Majesty 
arise. 

51. Now, this other will in the Word of life has 



26 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS 

freedom in itself; and the anguishful will in the 
sharpness of Nature desires freedom, that freedom 
might be revealed in the anguish of the fierce wrath- 
ful mind. 

52. Whence then also anguish arises, that the 
first will wishes to be free from the dark sourness 
(astringency), and freedom desires manifestation; 
for it cannot find itself in itself without sharpness 
or pain. For the will of freedom, which is called 
Father, desires to manifest itself, and that it cannot 
do without properties. 

53. It is therefore desirous of properties, which 
take their rise in anguish, in essences, in fire, thereby 
to manifest its wonders, power and colours, which 
without Nature cannot be. 

54. Thus, the first will (which is called Father, 
and is itself freedom) desires Nature, and Nature 
with great longing desires freedom, that it may 
be released from the torment of anguish. And it 
receives freedom in its sharp fierceness in the 
imagination, at which it is terrified as a flash; for 
it is a terror of joy that it is released from the 
torment of anguish. 

55. And in the terror arise two beings, a mortal 
one and a living one, to be understood thus : 

56. The will which is called Father, which has 
freedom in itself, so generates itself in Nature, 
that it is susceptible of Nature, and that it is the 
universal power of Nature. 

57. The terror of its Nature is a kindler of fire. 
For when the dark anguish, as the very fervent, 
stern being, receives freedom in itself, it is trans- 



THE FIRST POINT 27 

formed in the terror, in freedom, into a flash, and 
the flash embraces freedom or gentleness. Then 
the sting of death is broken; and there rises in 
Nature the other will of the Father, which he drew 
prior to Nature in the mirror of wisdom, viz. his 
heart of love, the desire of love, the kingdom of joy. 

58. For in the Father's will fire is thus generated, 
to which the other will gives the power of gentle- 
ness and love. The fire takes the love-quality into 
its essence, and that is now its food, so that it burns, 
and gives from the consumption, from the terror, 
the joyous spirit. 

59. That is, here, the Holy Spirit, who originally 
prior to Nature is the Father's Will- Spirit, becomes 
manifest, and receives here the power of wonders; 
and proceeds trr.is from the Father (viz. from the 
first will to Nature) , from the other will in Nature, 
from fire, or from the terror of joy in the source of 
love, into the substantiality of gentleness. 

60. For gentleness is also become desirous of the 
fire's property, and the desire draws the gentleness 
of the kingdom of joy into itself. That is now the 
water of eternal life, which the fire drinks, and gives 
therefrom the light of Majesty. 

61. And in the light dwells the will of the Father 
and of the Son, and the Holy Spirit is the life there- 
in. He reveals now the power of the gentle essen- 
tiality in the light, and that is colours, wonders and 
virtues. 

62. And this is called virgin Wisdom; for it is 
not a genetrix, neither itself reveals anything, but 
the Holy Spirit is the revealer of its wonders. It 



28 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS 

is his vesture and fair adornment, and has in it the 
wonders, colours and virtues of the divine world; 
it is the house of the Holy Trinity, and the ornament 
of the divine and angelic world. 

63. In its colours and virtues the Holy Spirit 
has revealed the choirs of angels, as well as all the 
marvels of created things, all which have been 
beheld from eternity in wisdom; without being 
indeed, but in wisdom as in the mirror, according 
to their figures; which figures have in the motion 
of the Father advanced into essence and into a 
creaturely existence, all according to the wonders 
of wisdom. 

64. Now, understand us also concerning the other 
being, where in the terror Nature divides into two 
beings, as mentioned above: viz. one through the 
Father's will into fire or into the fire- world; and 
one through the Father's other will that is drawn 
or generated in himself, into the majestic light- 
world. 

65. And the other being, viz. the house of terror 
in itself, in death, in the darkness of the hostile 
source (Qual) , which must stand thus in order that 
there may be an eternal longing in this anguish to 
be freed from the source. For this longing makes 
the first will to Nature eternally desirous to come 
to the aid of its being. Whence then in the 
Father's will mercy arises, which enters with free- 
dom into the anguish, but cannot remain in the 
anguish, but goes forth in fire into the source of 
love. 

66. That is, his other will, or his heart, issues in 



THE FIRST POINT 29 

him as a fountain of love and mercy, from whence 
compassion has its origin, so that there is a pity on 
distress and misery, and a sympathy; viz. here, the 
Father's will, which is free, reveals itself in the 
fierceness of Nature, so that the fierce wrathfulness 
is mitigated. 

67. But nevertheless on one part the terrible 
wheel of fierceness continues independently. For 
in the terror a mortification is brought about, not 
indeed a still death, but a mortal life; and re- 
sembles the worst thing, as is an aqua fortis or a 
poison in itself. For such a thing must be, if the 
centrum, naturae is to subsist eternally. 

68. And on the other part life proceeds out of 
death, and death must therefore be a cause of life. 
Else, if there were no such poisonous, fierce, fervent 
source, fire could not be generated, and there could 
be no essence nor fiery sharpness; hence also there 
would be no light, and also no finding of life. 

69. The first will, which is called Father, finds 
itself thus in wonders; and the other will, which is 
called Son, finds itself thus in power. Moreover, 
thus also the kingdom of joy arises ; for if there were 
no pain, there were also no joy. But this is the 
kingdom of joy, that life is delivered from anguish, 
although life has its origin thus. 

70. And therefore the creatures have poison, viz. 
a gall, for their life. The gall is the cause that there 
is a mobility by which life rises; for it occasions 
fire in the heart, and the right life is fire, but it is 
not the figure of life. 

71. From the fire-life springs the right spirit, 



30 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS 

which goes forth from fire in the light; it is free 
from fire as air, which nevertheless arises from 
fire, is free from fire. 

72. For the right spirit, or in man the spirit which 
is generated from the soul's fire, has its property 
in the Light of life, which burns from fire. For it 
arises from death, it proceeds out of death, the 
hostile source has remained away from it in fire, 
and below fire, in the cause of fire, viz. in fierce 
wrathful death. 

73. Fierce wrathful death is thus a root of life. 
And here, ye men, consider your death and also 
Christ's death, who has begotten us again out of 
death through the fire of God; for out of death is 
the free life born. Whatever can go out from 
death is released from death and the source of wrath. 
That is now its kingdom of joy, that there is no 
longer any fierce source in it ; it has remained away 
from it in death (in the dark world) . And thus out 
of death life attains eternal freedom, where there 
is no more any fear or terror; for in life the terror 
is broken. 

74. The right life is a power of joy, a perpetual 
well-being and pleasing delight; for there is no 
pain in it, save only a desire, which has all the 
property of pain, and yet the pain cannot uplift 
itself in it so as to kindle its property therein, for 
light and freedom hinder that. 



THE FIRST POINT 31 



CHAPTER II 

Of the proprium of the principle. What the 
principle is, or what they all three are. 

1. When life and movement appears, which pre- 
viously existed not, a principle is present. Eire is 
a principle with its property, and light is also a 
principle with its property, for it is generated from 
fire, and yet is not the fire's property. It has also 
its own life in itself, but fire is cause thereof, and 
the terrible anguish is a cause of both. 

2. But the will to anguish, which gives birth to 
the anguishful nature, and which is called Father, 
that it is impossible to search out. We inquire 
only how it brings itself into the highest perfection, 
into the being of the Holy Trinity; and how it 
manifests itself in three principles, and how the 
essence of each source arises ; what essence is, whence 
life with the senses has its origin, and the wonder 
of all beings. 

3. Thus, we recognize the third principle, or the 
source of this world, with the stars and elements, 
to be a creation from the marvels of the eternal 
wisdom. 

4. The third principle manifests the first two, 
though each is manifest in itself. But the eternal 
Being has willed in his wonders, which have been 
beheld in wisdom, to manifest himself in such a 



32 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS 

property, viz. according to the ground of eternity, 
according to the source of wrath and of love; and 
has created all into a creaturely and figurative 
being, evil and good according to the eternal origin. 
As we plainly see that in this world there is evil and 
good; of which, however, the devils are a great 
cause, who in their creation have at the fall moved 
more vehemently the fierce matrix in the wrath, 
God having moved himself more exceedingly 
according to the property of wrath, to cast them 
forth out of light into the death of fierce wrath- 
fulness; whereby also the heavenly Essence was 
moved, so that very much which stood in freedom 
has become shut up in the earthly essence. 

5. As we see in gold and its tincture, which is 
free from the earthly essence. For it resists fire 
and every quality, no quality can hold it in check, 
but only God's will; and that must come to pass 
repeatedly by reason of the unworthiness of the 
world. 

6. And if we rightly consider the creation of this 
world and the spirit of the third principle, viz. the 
spirit of the great world with the stars and elements, 
we find therein the property of the eternal world 
as it were mixed, like unto a great marvel, whereby 
God, the highest good, has willed to manifest and 
bring into being the eternal wonders which existed 
in mystery. 

7. We find good and evil, and we find in all 
things the centrum naturae or the torture-chamber. 
But we find especially the spirit of the great 
world in two sources, viz. in heat and cold. 



THE FIRST POINT 33 

Here, by cold we understand the centre of the 
sour sharp fierceness, and by heat the principle 
of fire, and yet they have but one origin from one 
another. 

8. Fire arises from the fierceness of the cold, and 
cold from the centrum naturae,, viz. from the sour 
sharp anguish, where the sourness (astringency) 
contracts so strongly into itself and makes sub- 
stance. As we are to know that in the motion of 
the Father at creation it has made earth and stones, 
although there was no matter for this, but only 
His own being, which is generated in two principles, 
viz. in the light-world and world of death, in two 
desires. 

9. That which the fierceness attained in the 
motion became shaped into the terrestrial globe. 
And we find therein a diversity of things, evil and 
good; and it often happens that from the worst 
may be made the best, because the centrum naturae 
is therein. If it be brought into fire, the pure child 
of the eternal Essence may be extracted from it; 
when it is liberated from death, as is to be seen in 
gold. 

10. In this world, however, we cannot attain 
the eternal fire, and therefore also can develop 
nothing from this principle. That is want of the 
eternal fire, which we do not reach but in imagina- 
tion only, by which a man has power to lead life 
out of death and bring it into the divine substan- 
tiality. This can be done only in man; but what is 
outside of man belongs to God, and remains unto 
the renovation, to the end of this time. 



34 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS 

11. And thus we give you to understand the 
nature and property of the principles. The first 
Principle lies in the fire of the will, and is a cause 
of the two others, also of life and understanding; 
and is an upholding of Nature, as well as of all the 
properties of the Father. 

12. The second Principle lies in light, as in the 
fire of desire. This desire makes substance from 
the property of the first principle. 

13. The first and second principle are Father and 
Son in eternity. One dwells in the other, and yet 
each retains its property. There is no mixing in 
the essence; but one receives the other in desire, 
and the light dwells in the fire's desire, so that the 
fire's property gives its desire to the light, and the 
light to the fire. 

14. Thus there is one being and not two, but 
two properties, whereof one is not the other, nor 
eternally can become so. As the spirit's property 
cannot be fire and light, and yet proceeds from 
fire out of light, and could not subsist either from 
fire or from light alone. Fire alone can not give 
it, neither could light, but the two give it. It is 
the life of both, and is one being only, but three 
properties, whereof one is not the other, as is to 
be seen in fire, light and air. 

15. The third Principle has just these properties. 
It has also fire, light and spirit, that is, air; and 
is in all particulars like to the eternal Being. But 
it has a beginning, and proceeds from the Eternal ; 
it is a manifestation of the Eternal, an awakening, 
image and similitude of the Eternal. It is not the 



THE FIRST POINT 35 

Eternal; but an essence has arisen in the eternal 
Desire, which has manifested itself therein and 
brought itself into a being like the Eternal. 

16. Reason says: God has made this world out 
of nothing. Answer : There was certainly for that 
no substance or matter that were outwardly pal- 
pable; but there was such a form in the eternal 
power in the will. 

17. The creation of this world was brought about 
by an awakening of the Will-spirit. The inner 
will, which exists within in itself, has stirred up its 
own nature, as the centre, which, passing out of 
itself, is desirous of the light which is pressing forth 
from the centre. Thus the centre has seized out 
of itself a being in desire; that is, it has seized 
or made for itself being in its own imagination 
in desire, and has also laid hold of the light's 
nature. 

18. It has with the beginning laid hold of the 
Eternal; and therefore the beings of this world 
must enter by figure again into the Eternal, for 
they have been apprehended in the Eternal. But 
whatever was made or seized from the beginning 
in desire, that returns into its aether as into the 
nothing, merely into the mirror of imagination 
again. That is not of the Eternal, but is and be- 
longs to the eternal Magic in desire. Like as a fire 
swallows up and consumes a substance whereof 
nothing remains, but becomes again as it was when 
as yet it was no substance. 

19. And thus we give you to understand what 
this world's existence is. Nothing else than a 



36 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS 

coagulated smoke from the eternal aether, which 
thus has a fulfilment like the Eternal. It shuts 
itself in a centrum of a substance, and finally con- 
sumes itself again; and returns again into the 
eternal Magic, and is but for a while a wonder as a 
revelation of the Eternal, whereby the Eternal, 
which is manifest in itself, manifests itself also out 
of itself, and pours out its imagination; and thus 
renews that which was seized or made by the motion 
in desire, that the end may again enter into the 
beginning. 

20. For nothing can enter into the freedom of 
the Eternal, except it be like the Eternal, subsist in 
the fire of the will, and be as subtle as the light's sub- 
stantiality, that is, as a water which can dwell in a 
being wherein the light can dwell, and convey its 
lustre through. This is not laid hold of by the 
centrum naturae, and though it be the property of 
Nature, yet it is something eternal. 

21. Thus we give you to understand that all 
that is born in this world, which has substance, 
which proceeds not from the eternal Essence, 
inherits not the Eternal; but its figure persists 
magically in the eternal Mystery, for it went origin- 
ally at creation out of the Eternal. But its body 
and the entire substance of the source passes away, 
as a smoke is consumed; for it is from the begin- 
ning, and goeth into the end. 

22. But whatever arises from the eternal Essence, 
from the essentiality of the eternal Light, cannot 
pass away. That only in it perishes, which, pro- 
ceeding from the temporal, has entered into the 



THE FIRST POINT 37 

Eternal; as the outer flesh, which through imagina- 
tion was in man introduced into the Eternal; that 
must be consumed like smoke. 

23. But whatever originating from the eternal 
Imagination is re-introduced into the Eternal, 
persists eternally; and that which is born from the 
Eternal (understand, from the Eternal Nature), 
and is in man the soul, remains eternally, for it has 
arisen from the Eternal. 

24. But if something be born from the eternal 
centre of wrath, that may enter into its renovation, 
if it will. As the Eternal Nature of the essence 
of external Nature renews itself, and abandons that 
which it made in the beginning, and retains only 
the magical image which it brought out of the 
eternal will into the outward by the Verbum Fiat 
at creation; so may man also renew that which he 
makes. If he abandon the earthly, then he may 
renew that which he has progenerated from the 
Eternal ; but if it be not renewed, it remains in the 
source. 

25. For all that becomes not or is not as fire, 
light and water, cannot subsist in freedom, but 
remains in the source of that which it has awakened 
or made in itself, — understand, from the centrum 
naturae. Whatever it has introduced into the will 
of freedom will thus be for it a torment and gnaw- 
ing, or contrary opposite will, which it has generated 
from its own nature, by which it has made freedom 
dark for itself, so that the light cannot shine 
through. That will be its darkness. 

26. For where the will is dark, there also the being 



38 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS 

of the will, or its body, is dark; and where the will 
is in torment, there also the body is in torment. 
For which cause the children of the light of free- 
dom will be separated in the source of anguish from 
the children of darkness, each into its principle. 

27. Further, we give you to understand that each 
principle generates its own life according to its 
property. But fire is the bound of separation 
which satisfies the two eternal principles, darkness 
and fight. To the darkness it gives its sting and 
the pang, and to the light its sensibility and life. 

28. So also the third Principle has two properties, 
viz. heat and cold. Heat is the principle, and gives 
its sting and pang to the cold; and to the light 
it gives fife and sensibility. The light in its turn 
gives its substantiality to the fire, so that it is 
united amicably with it. The cold gives also its 
property and substantiality to the fire, and the 
fire breaks this, and makes from its substantiality 
death and a dying. There is always, therefore, an 
enmity between heat and cold, and they are never 
at one. 

29. But this they attain in their enmity, that 
life buds through death; for from heat and cold 
arises the growth of the third principle (in which 
we live outwardly). From cold there comes fruit 
out of the earth, as well as the body of all creatures, 
and, in the elements, substance. From heat there 
comes in its contention life into the body of all 
creatures and plants; as also in the deep of the 
elements it gives the spirit of the great world 
in diversity of figures. That is to say, where 



THE FIRST POINT 39 

cold makes substance, there heat makes a spirit. 

30. Thus is the Essence all in wrestling combat, 
that the wonders of the eternal world may become 
manifest in fragility, and that the eternal exemplar 
in the wisdom of God may be brought into figures. 
And that these models in the eternal Magic, in 
Mystery, may stand eternally to God's glory, and 
for the joy of angels and men; not indeed in being, 
but in Mystery, in Magic, as a shadow of being, 
that it may be eternally known what God has 
wrought, and what he can and is able to do. 

31. For, after the dissolution of this world, there 
remains in existence only what is eternal, as eternal 
spirits with the eternal substantiality of their bodies, 
together with the wonders wrought here, which 
stand in figure magically, by which the spirits will 
recognize the might and marvels of God. 

32. We are now to consider the principles with 
their wonders. These are all three none else than 
the one God in his wonderful works, who has 
manifested himself by this world according to the 
property of his nature. And we are thus to under- 
stand a threefold Being, or three worlds in one 
another. 

33. The first is the fire-world, which takes its 
rise from the centrum naturae, and Nature from the 
desiring will, which in eternal freedom has its origin 
in the unground, whereof we have not nor support 
any knowledge. 

34. And the second is the light-world which 
dwells in freedom in the unground, out of Nature, 
but proceeds from the fire-world. It rceeives its 



40 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS 

life and sensibility from fire. It dwells in fire, and 
the fire apprehends it not. And this is the middle 
world. 

35. Fire in the centrum naturae before its en- 
kindling gives the dark world; but is in its enkin- 
dling in itself the world of light, when it separates 
into light and leaves the centre in darkness, for it 
is only a source in itself, and a cause of life. 

36. It has creatures, but they are of the same 
fierce essence. They feel no pain; to them the 
light were a pain. But to the fallen devils, who in 
the principle were created in the world of light, 
to them the darkness is a pain, and fire a strength 
or might, for it is their right life, although according 
to many properties, by virtue of the centrum nat- 
urae, in accordance with that essence. 

37. The third world is the outer, in which we 
dwell by the outer body with the external works 
and beings. It was created from the dark world 
and also from the light-world, and therefore it is 
evil and good, terrible and lovely. Of this property 
Adam was not to eat, nor imaginate thereinto; 
but the three worlds were to stand in him in order, 
that one might not comprehend the other, as in God 
himself. For Adam was created from all the three 
worlds, an entire image and similitude of God. 

38. But seeing he has eaten of evil and good, and 
introduced the outer into the middle, the outer 
must now break off from the middle ; and a separa- 
tion takes place, in which the outer must return 
into its aether, and the middle remains. 

39. Thus, if one see a right man, he may say: 



THE FIRST POINT 41 

I see here three worlds standing, but not moving. 
For the outer world moves by the outer body, but 
the outer body has no power to move the light- 
world; it has only introduced itself into the world 
of light, whereby the light-world is become extin- 
guished in man. He has, however, remained to 
be the dark world in himself; and the light-world 
stands in him immoveable, it is in him as it were 
hidden. 

40. But if he be a right man by the new birth, 
then it stands in him as light shines through water, 
and makes the essence mobile and desireful, so that 
the essence buds. Thus it is with the new man in 
the Light. And as we cannot move the light of the 
sun, so neither can we move the eternal Light or 
the light-world. It stands still and shines through 
everything that is susceptible of it, whatsoever is 
thin like a nothing, as indeed fire and water are; 
though all is substantial, but in reference to the 
external as a nothing. 

41. Thus each principle has its growth from 
itself ; and that must be, else all were a nothing. 

42. The principle of fire is the root, and it grows 
in its root. It has in its proprium sour, bitter, 
fierceness and anguish; and these grow in its 
proprium in poison and death into the anguishful 
stern life, which in itself gives darkness, owing to 
the drawing-in of the harshness. Its properties 
make sulphur, mercury and salt; though the fire's 
property makes not Sul in sulphur, but the will of 
freedom makes Sul in Phur, whilst the principle 
goes forward. 



42 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS 

43. But what advances into its properties is only 
Phur, viz. sternness, with the other forms in the 
centre. This is the chief cause of life and of the 
being of all things. Though it is bad in itself, yet 
it is the most useful of all to life and the manifesta- 
tion of life. For there could be no life without this 
property, and this principle is grounded in the 
internal and external world; in the internal as 
imperceptible, in the external perceptible by its 
fierceness. 

44. The second Principle has also its growth from 
itself, for fire streams forth in light with its pro- 
perties. But the Light transforms the fierce wrath- 
ful properties into a desire of love and joy. And 
therefore the fire's essence and property is wholly 
transformed in the Light, so that out of anguish 
and pain comes a love-desire, out of the stinging 
and raging a friendly sensible understanding. 

45. For the Light kindles the essences with the 
quality of love, so that they give from themselves 
a growth in the property of the spirit : viz. a friendly 
will, morality, piety, patience in suffering, hope 
to be delivered from evil; continually speaking of 
God's wonderful works in desire and joy, ringing 
forth, singing and rejoicing in the works and won- 
ders of God ; always desiring to do right, to hinder 
evil and wickedness; always wishing to draw one's 
neighbour by love into the world of light; fleeing 
from evil; always subduing the evil affections with 
patience, in hope of being released therefrom; 
rejoicing in the hope of that which the eyes see 
not and external Reason knows not; continually 



THE FIRST POINT 43 

pressing forth out of evil, and introducing the desire 
into the divine Being; always wishing to eat of 
God's bread. 

46. These properties hath the new man who is 
born again from the light-world. These are his 
fruits, which the light-world continually brings forth 
in him quite hiddenly to the old Adam, and continu- 
ally mortifies the old Adam of this world, and is 
always in combat with him. Which old Adam 
must therefore follow the new man; in sooth like 
a lazy ass which is obliged to carry the sack, his 
master continually lashing him on. Thus doth the 
new man to the old; he compels him, so that he 
must do what he would fain not do. What pertains 
to the joy of this world were more acceptable to the 
old ass; but he must thus be the servant. 

47. Secondly, the principle has its growth, and 
gives its fruit to the third principle generally, viz. 
to the spirit of the great world, so that the external 
and internal turba are held in check. It presses 
through and gives f ruitf ulness ; it stays the fierce- 
ness of the stars, and breaks the constellation of 
the spirits and also of the firmamental heaven. 
It resists the wrath of the devil and the devices of 
wicked men, so far however as there are found saints 
who are worthy of it. 

48. The third Principle has also its growth; and 
therein were generated and created from what is 
inward the stars and elements, which in this place 
together with the sun are called the third principle. 
For the two inward worlds, viz. the fire-world and 
light-world, have manifested themselves by the third 



U SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS 

principle ; and all is mixed together, good and evil, 
love and enmity, life and death. In every life 
there is death and fire; also, contrariwise, a desire 
of love, all according to the property of the internal 
world. And two kinds of fruit grow therefrom, 
evil and good; and each fruit has both properties. 
They show themselves moreover in every life in 
this world, so that wrath and the evil quality are 
always fighting against love, each property seeking 
and bearing fruit. What the good makes, that 
the evil destroys; and what the evil makes, that 
the good destroys. It is a perpetual war and 
contention, for the properties of both the inward 
principles are active externally; each bears and 
produces fruit to the internal kingdom, each will 
be lord. 

49. Cold, as the issue from the inward centre, 
from the fierceness of death, will be lord, and be 
continually shutting up in death ; it always awakens 
the sting of death. And heat, as the issue from the 
right fire, will also be lord; it would subdue and 
consume all, and will be always crude or unfash- 
ioned, without a body. It is a spirit, and desires 
only a spirit-life. It gives sting to the cold, for 
oftentimes it kills it, so that it must forego its right 
and surrender itself to the heat. 

50. In the same way the sun, or the light, will 
also have reason and be lord. It overcomes heat 
and cold, for it makes in its lucid gentleness water, 
and introduces in the light's spirit a friendly spirit, 
viz. the air; although fire gives the force of the 
wind, and the sun the gentle spirit which is properly 



THE FIRST POINT 45 

called air. It is indeed one, but has two properties, 
one according to the fire, as a terrible uplifting, and 
one according to the light, as a gentle life. 

51. The external principle is thus a perpetual 
war and contention, a building and breaking; what 
the sun or the light builds, that the cold destroys, 
and the fire consumes it entirely. 

52. In this struggle its growth rises in mere 
combat and disunion ; the one draws out of the earth 
its fruitfulness, the other destroys or swallows it up 
again. 

53. In all animals it causes malice and strife; for 
all animals and all the life of this world, except man, 
is only a fruit of the third principle and possesses 
only the life of the third principle, both its spirit 
and body are only this. And all that moves in 
this world, and man by his spirit and visible body in 
flesh and blood, is also only the fruit of this same 
essence, and nothing else at all. 

54. But seeing he has in himself also the two 
inward worlds (which give him the right under- 
standing, discernment and disposition; which also 
during this time of the earthly and elemental body 
are in conflict with one another), let him therefore 
take heed; the world that he makes lord in him, 
the same will eternally be lord in him. During 
this time he can break, and no farther. When the 
outward breaks, then all stands in its aether. The 
soul is free, and is the punctum, and has the under- 
standing; it may incline whither it will and may 
support which principle it pleases; the aether into 
which it enters, there it is eternally. 



46 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS 

55. And thus we understand the foundation of 
the three principles (like as the tongue of the beam 
of a" balance) ; what God and eternity is and is able 
to do, and what growth each principle gives from 
itself, from its property, and how we are to investi- 
gate the ground of Nature. 

Thus the first part or point is completed. 



THE SECOND POINT 

Of the mixed tree of evil and good, or the life 
of the three principles in one another; 
how they unite and agree. 

CHAPTER III 

1. In God's kingdom, viz. in the light-world, no 
more than one principle is truly known. For the 
Light rules, and the other sources and properties 
all exist hiddenly as a mystery; for they must 
all serve the Light, and give their will to the Light. 
And therefore the wrath-essence is transformed in 
the Light into a desire of light and of love, into 
gentleness. 

2. Although the properties, viz. sour, bitter, 
anguish and the sharp pang in fire remain eternally 
even in the light-world, yet none of them is mani- 
fest in its property; but they are all of them 
together only causes of life, mobility and joy. 

3. That which in the dark world is a pang, is in 
the light-world a pleasing delight ; and what in the 
dark is a stinging and enmity, is in the light an 
uplifting j oy. And that which in the dark is a fear, 
terror and trembling, is in the light a shout of joy, a 
ringing forth and singing. And that could not be, 
if originally there were no such fervent, austere 
source. 

47 



48 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS 

4. The dark world is therefore the ground and 
origin of the light- world ; and the terrible evil must 
be a cause of the good, and all is God's. 

5. But the light -world is only called God; and 
the principle between the light-world and dark 
world is called God's anger and fierce wrath. If 
this be awakened, as by the devil and all wicked 
men, these are then abandoned of the Light and 
fall into the dark world. 

6. The dark world is called death and hell, the 
abyss, a sting of death, despair, self-enmity and 
sorrowfulness; a life of malice and falsehood, in 
which the truth and the light is not seen and is not 
known. Therein dwell the devils and the damned 
souls; also the hellish worms, which the Fiat of 
death has figured in the motion of the omnipresent 
Lord. 

7. For hell hath in the darkness the greatest 
constellation of the fervent, austere power. With 
them all is audible as a loud noise. What rings in 
the Light, knocks and thumps in the Dark, as is 
to be seen in the thing men use to strike upon, 
that it gives a ringing sound. For the sound is not 
the thing; as a bell that is rung is itself not a sound, 
but only a hardness and a cause of the sound. The 
bell receives the stroke as a knocking, and from the 
hard knocking proceeds the ringing sound. The 
reason is this, that in the matter of the bell there is 
an element, which, at creation, in the motion of the 
omnipresent God, was shut up in the hardness; as 
is to be seen in the metalline tincture, if men would 
not be so mad and blind. 



THE SECOND POINT 49 

8. We recognize, then, that in hell, in the abyss, 
there are many and divers spirits, not only devils, 
but many hellish worms according to the property 
of their constellation, and void of understanding. 
As in this world there are irrational animals — 
worms, toads and serpents — so has also the abyss 
such in the fierce wrathful world. For all willed 
to be creaturely, and is gone into a being, so that 
the wrath-mirror also exhibited its wonders and 
manifested itself. 

9. There is indeed no feeling of pain in the hellish 
worms, for they are of the same essence and prop- 
erty. It is their life, and is a nature that is hidden 
to the outer world; but the Spirit of God who in 
all three principles is himself the source in accord- 
ance with each property, he knows it and reveals it 
to whom he will. 

10. If now we would say how the three principles 
are united together, we must place fire in the middle 
as the highest force, which brings to each principle 
a satisfying life and a spirit that it requires. There 
is, therefore, in the principles no strife; for fire 
is the life of all the principles, — understand, the 
cause of life, not the life itself. To the abyss it 
gives its pang, viz. the sting, so that death finds 
itself in a life; else the abyss were a stillness. It 
gives it its fierceness, which is the lift, mobility and 
original condition of the abyss; else there were a 
still eternity and a nothing. 

11. And to the light-world fire gives also its 
essence, else there were no feeling nor light therein, 
and all were only one. And yet beyond fire a 



50 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS 

Nothing, as an eye of wonders that knew not 
itself, in which were no understanding; but an 
eternal hiddenness, where no seeking or doing were 
possible. 

12. And to the third principle, viz. to the king- 
dom of this world, fire gives also its essence and 
quality, whereby all life and growth rises. All 
sense, and whatever is to come to anything, must 
have fire. There springs nothing out of the earth 
without the essence of fire. It is a cause of all 
the three principles, and of all that can be named. 

13. Thus fire makes a union of all the three 
principles, and is for each the cause of being. One 
principle fights not against another, but the essence 
of each desires only its own, and is always in com- 
bat ; and if that were not, then all were a still 
nothingness. Each principle gives to the other its 
power and form, and there is a perpetual peace 
between them. 

14. The dark world has the great pain and 
anguish which gives birth to fire, so that the will 
longs after freedom, and freedom longs after mani- 
festation, viz. after essences, and gives itself to 
fierceness that it may thus manifest itself. And it 
is brought thus into fire, so that from fierceness and 
freedom a fire arises. It gives itself to fierceness 
to swallow up in death ; but passes out of death with 
the received essences into a sphere of its own, as 
into a special world or source; and dwells in itself 
unapprehended by death and the dark world, and 
is a light in itself. 

15. Thus are death and fierceness a mother of 



THE SECOND POINT 51 

fire, also a cause of the light -world ; a cause, more- 
over, of all the essence of the third principle, a 
cause of all the essences in all lives. How then 
should one principle fight against another, if each 
vehemently desires the other? 

16. For the angelic light-world, and also this our 
visible world, must have the essence of dark death 
for their life and source ; there is a continual hunger 
after it. 

17. But each principle makes the source accord- 
ing to its property. It gives to the evil its good, 
and unites itself with it, and of three makes one, 
so that there is no strife between the three principles. 
But in the essence there is strife; and that must 
be, or all were a nothing. 

18. But we are to consider whence enmity has 
its origin. God has in each principle created 
creatures from the nature and proprium of the 
principle, therein to remain. And if they remain 
not therein, but introduce another thing by their 
imagination into themselves, into their property, 
that is an enmity and torment to them, as to the 
devil and fallen man. Both these are gone out 
from the light -world; the devil into the abyss of 
the strong wrath-power through pride, and man 
into this world, into the mystery of multiscience, 
as into the wonders. 

19. And now man has a difficulty and struggle 
to come out again; and this world, into which he 
has entered, holds him, for it will have him; and if 
he go out from it by force, it becomes hostile to him, 
assails him, and will not suffer him in itself. 



52 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS 

20. Hence it is that the children of this world 
do hate, vex, strike, kill and drive from them the 
children of light, for the spirit of this world impels 
them thereto. To which also the devil helps, for 
he knows that this world rests upon the abyss, and 
that he will receive the children of this world at 
the dissolution of this Mystery into his kingdom. 
Therefore he drives the children of God from this 
world, lest they introduce his children of this world 
along with them into the world of light. 

21. But if man had been created for this world, 
he would certainly let him alone ; but he continually 
desires to recapture his royal seat which he had, and 
from which he was cast out ; and if he may in no wise 
obtain it, he would deny it to the children who are 
to possess it. 

22. Now this is for man highly to consider, and 
not to be so blind. Every man has entered into 
the mystery of this world; but he should not there- 
fore as a prisoner enter also into the earthly craving 
of the confining of death, but should be a 
discerner and knower of the Mystery, and not 
the devil's butt and fool. He should by the 
imagination continually go out again into the light- 
world for which he was created, in order that the 
light may give him lustre, that he may know 
himself and see the outer Mystery. Then he is 
a man. But if not, he is the devil's fool and the 
ape of the light -world. Just as an ape will be 
knowing and play with everything, and imitate 
everything, so it is with the earthly man, who is but 
an ape. His juggling tricks with the light -world, 



THE SECOND POINT 53 

when he presses not thereinto with earnestness, 
but only plays therewith, — this the devil derides, 
and accounts him a fool. And so he is; he is an 
animal-man. So long as he is attached with his 
will to the external, and regards this world's good 
as his treasure, he is only a man with this world's 
essence, and not with the essence of God's light- 
world; and he gives his body to this world or to 
the earth, and his soul to the abyss of the dark 
world. 

23. Thus we give you to understand that in the 
tree of the three principles, these agree very well 
together, but not the creatures; for the creatures 
of each principle desire not the others. And there 
is a strong bar and closure between them, so that we 
know not, nor shall we see the others. 

24. But the devil's envy wars against the human 
race, for they have possessed his seat. Therefore 
it is said : Man, seek thyself, and see what thou art, 
and beware of the devil. So much on the second 
point, how the three principles can agree unitedly 
together. 



THE THIRD POINT 

Of the origin or contrariety in growth, in 

THAT LIFE BECOMES STRIFEFUL IN ITSELF. 

CHAPTER IV 

1. A thing that is one, that has only one will, 
contends not against itself. But where there are 
many wills in a thing, they become contending, 
for each would go its own conceived way. But if 
one be lord of the other, and has entirely full power 
over all the others, so that it can break them if 
they obey it not; then the thing's multiplicity 
has its existence in one reality, for the multitude 
of wills all give themselves to obedience of their 
lord. 

2. And thus we give you to understand life's 
contrariety, for life consists of many wills. Every 
essence may carry with it a will, and indeed does so. 
For sour, bitter, anguish and acid is a contrarious 
source, each having its own property, and wholly 
adverse one to the other. So is fire the enemy of 
all the others, for it puts each source into great 
anguish, so that there is a great opposition between 
them, the one being hostile to the other, as is to 
be seen in heat and cold, fire and water, life and 
death. 

3. So likewise the life of man is at enmity with 



THE THIRD POINT 55 

itself. Each form is hostile to the other, and not 
only in man, but in all creatures; unless the forms 
of life obtain a gentle, gracious lord, under whose 
control they must be, who can break their might 
and will. That is found in the Light of lif e, which 
is lord of all the forms, and can subdue them all; 
they must all give their will to the Light. And 
they do it also gladly, for the Light gives them 
gentleness and power, so that their harsh, stern, 
bitter, anguishful forms are all transformed into 
loveliness. They all give their will to the Light 
of life, and the Light gives them gentleness. 

4. Plurality is thus transformed into unity, into 
one will which is called the mind, and is the foun- 
tain from which the one will is able to draw evil 
and good. This is done by imagination, or by 
representation of a thing that is evil or good; and 
hence the thing's property is susceptible of the 
same property in the life. The life's property 
seizes the property of the thing represented, be it 
either a word or a work, and enkindles itself there- 
with in itself. It kindles also the other forms of 
life therewith, so that they begin to qualify, and 
every property burns in its source, either in love 
or wrath, all according to the nature represented. 
Whatever the imagination has seized, that it intro- 
duces into the mind. 

5. We give you therefore to understand that 
when the mind thus enkindles itself in a form, it 
enkindles the whole spirit and body, and forthwith 
carries its imagination into the inmost fire of the 
soul, and awakens the inmost centrum naturae. 



56 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS 

This, when it is enkindled, be it in wrath or love, 
apprehends itself in all the seven forms of Nature, 
which reach after the spirit of the soul's will, wherein 
is the noble image in which God reveals himself, 
and introduce their enkindled fire thereunto. As 
you have a similitude of this in fire: According to 
the matter in which it burns, such a light does it 
give; as is to be seen in sulphur compared with 
wood, and in many things besides. 

6. We understand then by this, that whatever 
nature and property the fire hath, such a property 
getteth also the light and the power of the light. 

7. Seeing then our noble image of God stands in 
the Light of life, in the soul's fire, it is highly recog- 
nizable by us how the spirit of the soul's will or the 
noble image is corrupted, and becomes enkindled 
in the source of wrath, often also in the source of 
love. And we see here our great danger and mis- 
ery, and do rightly understand why Christ has 
taught us patience, love and meekness, viz. that the 
soul's fire kindle not itself in wrath, also that we give 
not occasion to others to kindle their souls' fire 
in wrath, in order that God's kingdom be not 
hindered. 

8. Herein we recognize our heavy fall, that Adam 
has introduced into our souls' fire earthly matter, 
which burns as often as a source is awakened in 
the centre of the property of wrath. We see thus 
how we lie captive in God's wrath between anger 
and love, in great danger. 

9. And we give you this highly to recognize. 
You know, as we have set forth above and in all 



THE THIRD POINT 57 

our books, how from fire light proceeds as another 
principle, and yet has the fire's property and power, 
for the fire's centre gives them to the light's centre. 
And how the light is also desirous, and has a matrix 
of longing desire, which makes itself pregnant in 
desire with the power of the light, viz. with the 
gentleness of the light; and in this pregnancy lies 
the substance of the light, that is in the pure love 
of the Divine Nature. 

10. And then we have informed you how the fire 
draws this substance into itself, uses it for its light's 
essence, and swallows it up in itself, but gives from 
the essence another spirit, which is not fire. As 
indeed you see that fire gives two spirits: One 
that is furious and consuming, consisting of fierce- 
ness as property of the first matter; and secondly 
an air-spirit, which is the property of the light's 
gentleness. 

11. We are now to consider in what matter fire 
burns in the first essence. In whatever it has 
kindled itself, in love or anger, that is, in earthly 
or divine desire, such a fire it is, and gives also such 
a fire of light, and such a spirit from the fire of 
light. 

12. Now, if the matter of the first fire, wherein 
the fire burns, be good, then has the other fire of 
light also a good property, savour and source, and 
gives also a good, powerful, lovely light, and from 
the light's centre also a good and powerful spirit; 
and this spirit is the similitude of God, the noble 
image. 

13. But if the first fire be evil in its essence, and 



58 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS 

has an evil matter in which it burns, then is also 
the life's light a false source and a dim shining, as 
is to be seen in a sulphurous light; and the centre 
of this desiring light brings also out of its property 
such a matter into its fire, and the fire gives such a 
spirit from itself. 

14. It is now evident what spirit can or cannot 
attain the freedom of God. For the soul's spirit 
or the image which has in itself the dim, dark 
property, cannot be capable of the clear light of 
God. Further, if it has in itself fierce wrathful 
essences and qualities, it cannot unite with the 
gentleness of God and inqualif y with it ; for wrath 
is enmity against love and gentleness, and love 
suffers not wrath within it. Here they are sepa- 
rated : love thrusts wrath from it, and neither does 
wrath desire any more the property of love. 

15. For as soon as fire gives spirit from itself, 
it is perfect, and separates into its proprium, be it 
a spirit of light, or a dark wrathful sulphurous 
spirit. And into the same essence from which it is 
gone out does it desire to return again; for it is 
its property, be it in love or enmity to love. 

16. Accordingly we understand what spirits or 
souls live in the source of enmity, and how enmity 
originally arises, so that a life is at enmity with 
itself from the first matter unto the life's light. 
The cause lies in the wheel of Nature, in the seven 
spirits or forms, each of which has its own pro- 
perty; and in whichever property the mind be- 
comes enkindled, such a property getteth its soul's 
fire together with the will's spirit, which straight- 



THE THIRD POINT 59 

way aspires after substance and being, how it may 
realize that with which the spirit of the will is 
pregnant. 

17. Now it is necessary to break the earthly 
will's power and kill the old evil Adam, and bring 
his will-spirit by compulsion and force out of 
wickedness. For here, in this time, that is possible ; 
because the third principle by the water which 
gives gentleness is attached to the centre of the 
inward nature, and holds it captive as it were in its 
quality. 

18. But if the spirit of the soul's will, as the 
inward centre of light, breaks off from the outward 
and remains alone, then the soul's spirit remains 
in its property. For there is little remedy unless 
the spirit of the will have in the time of the external 
life turned round to God's love, and attained this 
as a sparkle in the inward centre. Then some- 
thing may be done. But in what agony and travail 
that is done, experiences full well the sparkle of 
love, which has to break down dark fierce death. 
It is purgatory enough to it. In what enmity 
life stands, in terror and anguish, till it can sink 
into the sparkle, into the freedom of God, he in- 
deed experiences who departs from this world so 
nakedly with little light. This, the present much 
too wise world regards as a jesting matter; but 
what kind of knowledge it has, it shows by its 
doing. 

19. And thus we understand also the devil's fall, 
who was an angel; how he imaginated back into 
the centre of the first property, and sought great 



60 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS 

strength and might (as the present world seeks 
great might and honour), and despised the light 
of love. Albeit he supposed the light would burn 
for him thus (and the world also hopes and supposes 
the light of God shall burn in its pomp), and he 
willed to enkindle himself still more vehemently, 
to see if he could dominate over all thrones, and 
over the essence of the Deity in gentleness; which 
proved to be his fall, as will happen also to the 
present world. 

20. Therefore let every man learn hereby to 
beware of pride and covetousness ; for the devil's 
fall came through pride and covetousness, in that 
he kindled in himself the centre of the dark world. 
Hence he was cast out of the light-world into the 
dark world. And thus it fares with all men, who, 
abandoning meekness and humility, enter into 
wrath, pride, covetousness and envy. All these 
imaginate into the centre of the dark Nature, as 
into the origin of Nature, and withdraw into the 
dark fire of the source of anguish, where the noble 
image is introduced into another quality, so that 
it must be in fear and enmity, each form of life 
being hostile to the other. 

21. And we see also very exactly herefrom, how 
God's kingdom is found only in the bright clear 
light in freedom, in love and gentleness ; for that is 
the property of the white clear light. As is to be 
seen in outer nature, that where there is a pleasant, 
mild and sweet matter for the outer fire (which 
is but the fierceness of the inner fire), that also 
a pleasant light and odour arise from it. Much 



THE THIRD POINT 61 

more is this so in the spirit-fire, to which no com- 
prehensible or external being belongs; but where 
the seven spirits of Nature make in themselves a 
fire, which is only a property and a source of fire, 
as indeed the dark world and light -world stand in 
such a spiritual property. 

22. As also the inner man, who is from the 
Eternal and who goeth into the Eternal; he has 
only the two worlds in him. The property to which 
he turns himself, into that world is he introduced, 
and of that world's property will he eternally be, 
and enjoy the same; either a source of love from 
the light-world of gentleness, or a hostile source 
from the dark world. 

23. Here he buds and grows in the middle world 
between the light-world and dark world; he may 
give himself up to which he pleases. The essence 
which obtains the dominion in him, whether fierce- 
ness or gentleness, the same he embraces, and it 
hangs into him and leads him; it gives him morals 
and will, and unites itself wholly with him; and 
thereinto man brings the spiritual man, viz. the 
image which God created from His being, from all 
the three principles. 

24. Therefore it is said : Take the cross upon thee ; 
enter into patience, into a meek life. Do not what 
the dark centre of wrath incites thee to, nor what 
the falsehood and pleasure of this world entice 
thee to; but break both their wills. Neither pro- 
voke any to anger. For if thou deal falsely, thou 
dost incense thy brother and hinder the kingdom 
of God, 



62 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS 

25. Thou shouldst be a leader into the kingdom 
of God, and enkindle thy brother with thy love and 
meekness, that he may see in thee God's essence 
as in a mirror, and thus in thee take hold also with 
his imagination. Doest thou this, then bringest 
thou thy soul, thy work, likewise thy neighbour 
or brother into God's kingdom, and enlargest the 
kingdom of heaven with its wonders. This has 
Christ taught us, saying: If any smite thee on 
one cheek, offer him the other also; if any take 
away thy cloak, withhold not from him thy coat 
also (Matt. v. 39, 40) ; that he may have in thee a 
mirror and retreat into himself, see thy meekness, 
acknowledge thou art God's child, and that God's 
Spirit leads thee; that he may learn of thee, de- 
scend into himself and seek himself. Else, if thou 
oppose him with defiance and spite, his spite be- 
comes kindled still more, and at last he thinks he is 
acting right to thee. But thus he must certainly 
recognize he doth thee wrong. 

26. And as God's love resists all wicked men, 
and the conscience often dissuades from evil, so 
also thy meekness and patience go to his bad con- 
science, and arraign the conscience in itself before 
God's light in the wrath. In this way many a 
wicked man goes out from his wickedness, descends 
into himself and seeks himself. Then God's Spirit 
puts him in mind of thy patience, and sets it before 
his eyes, and so he is drawn thereby into repentance 
and abstinence. 

27. Not that one should not defend oneself 
against a murderer or thief, who would murder and 



THE THIRD POINT 63 

steal. But where one sees that any is eager upon 
unrighteousness, one should set his fault openly 
with a good light before his eyes, and freely and 
of good will offer him the Christian richly-loving 
heart; that he may find actually and in fact, that 
it is done out of love-zeal to God, and that love 
and God's will are more to that man than the 
earthly nature, and that he purposely will not 
consent to anything passionate or evil being done; 
that he may see that the children of God do love 
more the love of God and do cleave more to it than 
to any temporal good; and that God's children 
are not at home in this world, but only pilgrims, 
who gladly relinquish everything of this world 
so that they may but inherit the kingdom of 
heaven. 

28. All this the Spirit of God puts before the 
evil-doer in the life's light, and exhorts him there- 
by to conversion. But if he will not, then the 
wrath of God makes hellish fire from it, and finally 
gnaws him, to see if even yet he would know him- 
self and repent. Persisteth he in wickedness, then 
is he a wholly evil tree, grown in the wrath of God, 
and belongs to the abyss, to the dark world of 
anguish, to the dark God Lucifer; there he must 
devour his own abominations. So much on the 
third point. 



THE FOURTH POINT 

HOW THE HOLY AND GOOD TREE OF ETERNAL LIFE 
GROWS THROUGH AND OUT OF ALL THE GROWTHS 
OF THE THREE PRINCIPLES, AND IS LAID HOLD 
OF BY NONE. 

CHAPTER V 

1. A thing that dwells in itself can be grasped by 
nothing, for it dwells in nothing; there is nothing 
before it that can hold it in check, and it is free also 
from the thing without it. 

2. And thus we give you to understand concern- 
ing the divine power and light, which dwells in 
itself and is comprehended in nothing; nothing 
touches it, unless it be of the property thereof. 
It is everywhere in Nature, yet Nature touches it 
not (understand, the outer Nature of the world). 
It shines therein as the sun in the elements. The 
sun shines in water, also in fire and through the 
air, and yet is not seized or held by any of them. 
It gives to all beings power, and makes the essential 
spirits lovely and joyous. It draws by its power 
essence out of the earth, and not only essence, but 
also the being of the essences, which gives out of 
the essence a body. 

3. What the sun does in the third principle by 
transforming all hostile essence and quality into 



THE FOURTH POINT 65 

gentleness, that God's light does in the forms of the 
Eternal Nature. 

4. It shines in them and also from them; that 
is, it kindles the forms of Nature, so that they all 
obtain the Light's will, and unite themselves and 
give themselves up wholly to the Light; that is, 
they sink down from their own essence and become 
as if they had no might in themselves, and desire 
only the Light's power and might. The Light 
accordingly takes their power and might into itself, 
and shines from this same power. And thus all the 
forms of Nature attain to the Light, and the Light 
together with Nature is but one will, and the Light 
remains lord. 

5. Else, if the wills in the stern forms of Nature 
will be lord, there is a separation and an eternal 
enmity. For one form is always at enmity with the 
other; each elevates itself. And therefrom comes 
contrariety, that a creature is so evil, wrathful and 
hostile, that often life is at strife in itself. 

6. And as we know that the Light comes to the 
aid of the stern life of Nature, of the properties of 
the essences, so that a joyous life arises, and is thus 
changed in the Light; so also we know that the 
life of dark wrathfulness is the enemy of the Light, 
for it cannot catch the Light. The eternal Light 
shines through the darkness, and the darkness can- 
not comprehend it ; for the plurality of wills in the 
dark Nature are all shut up in death; the Light 
shines not in them, but through them ; they seize not, 
nor do they see the Light. Nevertheless, the 
Light is in the dark world, but it fills not the dark- 



66 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS 

ness; and therefore the essences of the dark world 
remain a hostile poison and death, the essences being 
at enmity with themselves. 

7. Thus there are three principles in one another, 
and one comprehends not the other ; and the eternal 
Light cannot be laid hold of by anything, unless 
that thing fall into death, and give its essence 
voluntarily to the fire of Nature, and pass with its 
essential will out of itself into the Light, and aban- 
don itself wholly to the Light; and desire to will 
or to do nothing, but commit its will to the Light, 
that the Light may be its will. 

8. Thus the Light seizes it, and it also the Light. 
And thus the evil will is given up to the Light, and 
the Light gives its power to the malignity, and 
makes of the malignity a friendly good will, which 
is only a love-desire; for the gentleness of the 
Light has wholly embodied itself in the hostile will. 

9. So then God's will is done, and the evil is trans- 
formed into good, and God's love shines from his 
anger and fierce wrath; and no wrath is known in 
God's Eternal Nature. Thus we are to understand 
how the eternal Light, or the eternal Power-tree, 
shines through all the three principles, unappre- 
hended by any of them; for so long as an essence 
is out of God's will (viz. the gentle light-will), so 
long is it solitary and dwells in itself, and compre- 
hends nothing of God. But if it unite itself to 
God, and break and sink its own will, then it is one 
spirit in and with God, and God shines from that 
essence. 

10. And we understand also why the wicked soul, 



THE FOURTH POINT 67 

as well as the devil, sees not and knows not God; 
namely, because their will will not unite itself to 
God, it will itself be lord. It remains accordingly 
without God, only in itself, and God remains also 
in himself; and so one dwells in the other, and 
knows nothing of the other, for one turns its back to 
the other, and sees not the face of the other. 

11. And thus the world of light knows nothing 
of the devils, and the devils know nothing of the 
world of light, save only this, that they were once 
in it. They represent it to themselves as one who 
sees in imagination; although the light-world no 
longer yields itself up to their imagination, neither 
do they imaginate after it, for it terrifies them; also 
they are ashamed about it. 

12. So likewise we are to understand concerning 
the outer world. God's light shines through and 
through, but is apprehended only by that which 
unites itself thereunto. Seeing then this outer 
world as it were dumb and without understanding 
in respect of God, therefore it remains in its own 
will, and carries its own spirit in itself, although 
God has given it a Nature-god, viz. the sun, into 
which every being should cast its will and desire; 
whatever is in this world and does not do so, that 
remains in itself a great malignity and is its own 
enmity. 

13. And this world is recognized as a special 
principle because it has a Nature-god of its own, 
namely the sun; and yet truly the light of the 
Deity shines through all, through and through. 
The light of the sun takes essence from God's fire, 



68 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS 

and God's fire from God's light. And thus the 
light of the sun gives this power to the elements, and 
they give it to the creatures, also to the plants of the 
earth; and all that is of a good property receives 
thus God's power as a lustre through the mirror of 
wisdom, from whence it has its growth and life. 

14. For God is present to every being, but not 
every being receives him into its essence; but as in 
the mirror of the aspect in the sun's virtue ; for the 
sun proceeds from the eighth number. Its root 
from which it receives its brightness is the eternal 
fire, but its body is in this world. Its desire is 
directed wholly into this world, in which it shines; 
but its first root is in the first world, in the fire of 
God. This world gives being to its desire, and it 
gives its power to being, and fills every being in 
this world, as God's light does the divine light- 
world.. And if God's fire should burn no more, the 
sun would be extinguished, and also the divine 
light-world ; for God's fire gives essence to both, and 
is a principle of both. And if the dark world were 
not, neither would these two be ; for the dark world 
gives occasion for God's fire. 

15. The three worlds must accordingly be in 
one another, for nothing can subsist without a 
ground. For the dark world is the ground of 
Nature; and the eternal unfathomable will, which 
is called Father, is the ground of the dark world, 
as above set forth. And the light-world is hidden 
in the dark world, and also the dark world in the 
light-world. 

16. It is to be understood thus: This world is 



THE FOURTH POINT 69 

shut up in the wrath of God as in death ; for wrath 
springs up in this world's essence. If that were not 
so, then might this world's essence seize God's light. 

17. Thus this world receives only a reflection 
of God through the sun's power. The sun is not 
God's light, for it shines not wholly in divine 
essence, but shines in elemental essence. It has 
God's fire as its root, but is filled with this world's 
essence. For it is desirous as a magical craving, 
and receives in its imagination and craving the 
power of the stars and elements; and from this it 
shines also. 

18. Though God's fire is its root, yet it belongs 
not to God's kingdom. And here we understand 
how the devil is the poorest creature; for he cannot 
move a leaf except wrath be therein, and then he 
moves it according to the property of wrath. For 
the light and the power of this world is repugnant 
to him ; he enters not with his will into the property 
of the light, neither is he able to do so. He stands 
backward to the light of the sun in his figure and 
property, and therefore the sun's light profits him 
nothing. And all that grows in the sun's power, 
that unites itself unto the sun, that he is enemy to ; 
his will enters not readily thereinto. 



70 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS 



CHAPTER VI 

1. If we consider all this, and pass from the 
inward world into this outward visible world, we 
find that the essence of the external world has pro- 
ceeded from the internal, viz. from the imagination 
or desire of the internal world. And we shall find 
in the external world the property of the two inward 
worlds; also how the wills of both properties are 
moving and manifest in the external world. And 
then how the good, or the essence which has pro- 
ceeded from the light-world, is shut up in wrath 
and death; and how the divine power activates all, 
so that all grows through and out of the fierceness 
of death. 

2. For the earthly tincture has no communion 
or fellowship with the heavenly in the light-world. 
We find, however, in the earth another tincture 
which has fellowship with the heavenly, as in the 
precious metals, but is hidden in them. 

3. And we understand thus the motion and the 
Fiat of the two eternal worlds, viz. the dark world 
and the light-world: Each has longed after being; 
and as God put himself in motion once for all, one 
world could not be moved without the other. 

4. For the dark world contains the first centre 
of Nature, and the light-world the other centre, 
viz. the heart of God, or the Word of power of the 



THE FOURTH POINT 71 

Deity; and one world is not separated from the 
other. • 

5. Hereby we should recognize in what danger 
we stand, and think where we would plunge with 
our will. For if we plunge into the earthly craving, 
it captures us; and then the qualification of the 
abyss is our lord, and the sun our temporal god. 

6. But if we plunge with our will into the world 
out of this world, then the light-world captures our 
will, and God becomes our lord; and we abandon 
the earthly life of this world, and take with us 
whatever has come from the light-world into us, — 
understand, into Adam; the same is carried out 
of this world with the will which becomes one spirit 
with God. 

7. Reason says: Where are then the three 
worlds? It would have absolutely a separation, in 
which one were beyond or above the other. That, 
however, cannot possibly be, else the eternal un- 
fathomable Essence were bound to sever itself. 
But how can that sever itself which is a nothing, 
which has no place, which is itself all? That 
cannot enter into particular existence which has 
no ground, which cannot be comprehended, which 
dwells in itself and possesses itself; but it pro- 
ceeds out of itself, and manifests itself out of 
itself. 

8. It makes a thing out of itself, which in itself 
is but a will. In itself it is a spirit, but makes out 
of itself a form of spirit, and the form makes a 
being according to the property of the spirit. As 
indeed this world is a being, and the inward spirit 



72 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS 

possesses it. He is in every place, yet the place 
comprehends him not, but he comprehends the 
place. The place knows nothing of him, but it 
feels him; for he is the power and the spirit in 
the place. His will goes through being, and being 
has no eyes to see him, but he is the seeing of the 
place; and is himself no place or position, but 
makes for himself an unfathomable position, where 
there is no measurement. He is all, and yet also 
like to a nothing in comparison with the external. 
What he gives out of himself, that he possesses too; 
he passes not into it, but he is there before being 
occupies the place. The place contains but a reflec- 
tion of his will, as one sees one's form in a mirror, 
and yet cannot take hold upon it; or as the sun- 
shine is not laid hold of in water, yet the water 
feels it and receives the lustre ; or as the earth 
receives power from the sun, so that it brings 
forth fruit. In this way God dwells in all beings, 
and permeates and pervades all, yet is laid hold of 
by nothing. 

9. And as we understand that the earth has a 
great hunger and desire after the sun's power and 
light, in which it draws to itself and becomes 
susceptible of the sun's power and light, which 
without desire could not be; in like manner outer 
nature hungers after the inner, for the outward 
form arises from the inner. Thus outer nature 
receives in itself the form of the inner as a lustre 
or power; for it cannot seize the inward spirit, 
inasmuch as he dwells not in the outer, but pos- 
sesses himself in himself in the inner. 



THE FOURTH POINT 73 

10. But the outer nature receives by the mirror 
the form of the spirit, as water does the lustre of 
the sun. We are not to think that the inner is far 
from the outer, like the body of the sun is from 
the water; though neither is that so, that the sun 
is far from the water, for the water has the sun's 
essence and property, else it would not catch the 
sun's lustre. Although the sun is a corpus, yet the 
sun is also in the water, but not manifest ; the corpus 
makes the sun manifest in the water. And we 
are to know that the whole world would be nothing 
but sun, and the locus of the sun would be every- 
where, if God was to kindle and manifest it; for 
every being in this world catches the sun's lustre. 
There is in all a mirror, that the power and form 
of the sun may be received in all that is animate and 
inanimate, in all the four elements and their essence 
and substance. 

11. And so it is also with the inner light-world. 
It dwells in the outer world, and this receives 
power from it. It grows up in the outward power, 
and this knows nothing of it; and only feels the 
power, and the inward light it cannot behold ; only 
in its life's mirror it receives the reflection thereof, 
for the inward power makes in the outward form a 
likeness of itself. 

12. And thus then we are to recognize man. He 
is the inner and outer world (the cause, moreover, 
of the inner world in himself) , and, so far as belongs 
to him, also the dark world. He is all three worlds ; 
and if he remain standing in co-ordination, so that 



74 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS 

he introduce not one world into the other, then he 
is God's likeness. 

. 13. He should introduce the form or the mirror 
of the light-world into the outer world, and also 
into the inmost dark world, and bring the power 
of the middle or light-world into the mirror, and 
then he is suspectible of the divine light ; for essence 
seizes not the light, but the power of the light. But 
the mirror of power catches the light, as water does 
the sun ; for water is as a clear mirror in comparison 
with earth. 

14. Now if water be mixed with earth, it no 
longer catches the sun's light ; so likewise the human 
spirit or soul catches not God's light, unless it 
remain pure and set its desire upon that which is 
pure, viz, upon the light; for what life imaginates 
after, that it receives. The life of man is the form 
of the two inward worlds. If life desire sulphur 
in itself, then is Phur out of Sul its darkening; but 
if it desire only Sul, then it receives the power of 
the light, and in the power the light with its 
property. For in Phur, viz. in fierce wrathful 
Nature, life cannot remain clear as a mirror, but 
in Sul it can; for the life of man is a true mirror 
of the Deity, wherein God beholds himself. He 
gives his lustre and power to the human mirror, and 
finds himself in man, as also in angels and in the 
forms of heaven. 

15. The light-world's essence is his finding or 
revelation, and the dark world's essence is his loss. 
He sees not himself in the dark world, for it 
has no mirror that were susceptible of the light. 



THE FOURTH POINT 75 

All that imaginates after the dark world's essence 
and property, that receives the dark world's prop- 
erty, and loses the mirror of God. It becomes filled 
with dark wrath ; like as one mixes water with earth, 
and then the sun cannot shine therein. This water 
loses the mirror of the sun, and must withdraw 
again from the earth ; else it is nevermore any mirror 
of the sun, but is imprisoned in the wrathul dark 
earth. 

16. So it is also with human life. As long as 
it imaginates after God's Spirit, it receives God's 
power and light, and knows God. But when it 
imaginates after earthliness or after the dark 
world's property, it receives the essence of earthli- 
ness and of the dark world, and becomes filled with 
the same. Then is life's mirror shut up in dark- 
ness, and loses the mirror of God, and must be born 
anew. 

17. As we know that Adam thus made the pure 
mirror earthly, and lost God's power and light, 
which Christ, God's Son, restored again, and broke 
open the earthly darkness, and forcibly introduced 
the mirror of God. 

18. Thus we recognize how the holy tree grows 
through all things, and out of all beings; but is 
apprehended by no being, save only in the mirror 
of purity, as in the pure life of man; which life 
desires that tree, and it can be apprehended in no 
dark life. This then is the fourth point. 



THE FIFTH POINT 

HOW A LIFE MAY PERISH IN THE TREE OF LIFE. 
HOW IT PASSES OUT OF THE SOURCE OF LOVE 
AND JOY INTO A SOURCE OF MISERY, WHICH IS 
CONTRARY TO ALL OTHER LIVES. 

CHAPTER VII 

1. Every life is a clear gleam and mirror, and 
appears like a flash of a terrible aspect. But if 
this flash catch the light, it is transformed into 
gentleness and drops the terror, for then the terror 
unites itself to the light. And thus the light shines 
from the terrible flash; for the flash is the light's 
essence, it is its fire. 

2. The flash contains the centrum naturae, being 
the fourth form of Nature where life rises, which in 
the steady fire, as in the principle, attains to per- 
fection, but in the light is brought into another 
quality. 

3. Now, the origin of the imagination [magical 
attraction] is in the first form of Nature, viz. in the 
desiring sourness, which carries its form through 
the dark world unto fire; for the first desire goes 
through all forms, makes also all the forms, and 
is carried as far as to fire. There is the dividing 
bound-mark of spirit, there it is born. It is now 
free. It may by its imagination go back again 

76 



THE FIFTH POINT 77 

into its mother the dark world, or, going forward, 
sink down through the anguish of fire into death, 
and bud forth in the light. That depends on its 
choice. Where it yields up itself, there it must be ; 
for its fire must have substance, that it may have 
something to feed upon. 

4. Will the spirit eat of its first mother the sour- 
ness, that is, will it give to its fire for food the fierce 
essentiality in the centre, or the light's essentiality 
in the fight -world, that is all in its own power; 
whatever its fire receives, in the property thereof 
does it burn. 

5. In the dark property it burns in the dark, 
harsh, stern source, and sees in itself as a flash; it 
has only the mirror of darkness, and sees in the 
darkness. In the fight's property it catches the 
gentleness of the light, in which the light-fire burns, 
and sees in the light-world. All is nigh unto spirit, 
and yet it can see in no other world or property 
save in that wherein its fire burns ; of that world is 
the spirit only susceptible, it sees nothing in the 
other world; it has no eyes for that. It remains 
to it an eternal hiddenness, unless it has been in 
another world and gone out from thence, and given 
itself to another fire, as the devils did, who have 
indeed a knowledge of the light-world, but no 
feeling or seeing thereof ; the light -world is nigh to 
them, but they know it not. 

6. And now we are to recognize life's perdition, 
which comes about in the first Principle. There 
is the hinge, there the will may plunge whither it 
will. If it set its desire upon plurality and will 



78 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS 

itself be lord, then it cannot lay hold of plurality 
otherwise than in a dark, stern sourness, in the dark 
world. But if it desire to plunge into the nothing, 
into freedom, it must abandon itself to fire; and 
then it sinks down in the death of the first principle, 
and buds forth out of the anguish of fire in the 
light. For when it abandons itself, the eternal 
will to Nature (which is God the Father) leads 
it out through fire into himself. For with the 
abandoning it falls unto the first will to Nature, 
who brings it by the other will, which is his Son 
or Heart, out of the anguishful Nature, and places 
it with the Son's will in freedom beyond the 
torment of fire. There it obtains, instead of 
plurality, all; not for its own glory or power, but 
for God's glory and power; God is in it both its will 
and its doing. 

7. But whatever will itself be lord in fire, that 
goeth into its own number, into its essence which 
itself is; and whatever surrenders its power, sur- 
renders also its fire-burning, and falls unto that 
which is a cause of fire, viz. unto the eternal will of 
God. 

8. Thus it has fallen into freedom out of its fire 
of torment, and freedom kindles its fire. Its fire 
is now become a light and a clear mirror, for it has 
yielded itself up to Freedom, viz. to God. And 
thus its fire is a semblance and reflection of the 
Majesty of God. 

9. But that which will not, but will itself be lord, 
that remains its own; it cannot bring itself in its 
own forms higher than to fire, moreover only to 



THE FIFTH POINT 79 

the flash; for no clear fire can burn in it, seeing 
it has in itself no clear substance for fire. The 
centrum naturae has nothing in itself from which a 
clear brightness is able to arise ; but the freedom out 
of Nature is a cause of such shining. Whatever 
yields itself up to Nature, yet desires not Nature's 
property but freedom, that becomes enkindled in 
its flash of life by freedom, in the way the second 
Principle has enkindled itself. 

10. Thus we understand how a life perishes, that 
is, how it introduces itself in anguish and torment 
into darkness ; namely, when it will be its own lord 
and desires plurality. If it will not give itself up 
to death, then it cannot attain any other world. 

11. For every life arises in the torment of 
anguish, in Nature, and has no light in itself, except 
it enter into that which gives birth to Nature ; there 
it receives light. 

12. For all that is in Nature is dark and in 
anguish, as is to be recognized by this world. Were 
the sun to be taken away, there would be nothing 
but anguish and darkness. And therefore God put 
himself in motion, so as to give a light to this world, 
that the external life might be in light. 

13. But as regards the inner life of the soul, it 
has another form. This inner life can the external 
not attain. Hath the soul's fire not God's light, 
neither can the soul's will enter into God's light; 
it must remain in the darkness of the Eternal 
Nature. 

14. External Reason thinks, if the outward eye 
sees, that is good; there is no other seeing possible. 



80 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS 

Bad enough, forsooth! When the poor soul bor- 
rows the external mirror, and must make shift with 
this alone, where is its seeing? When the external 
mirror breaks, wherewith will it see then? With 
the terrible fire-flash in the horror, in the darkness ; 
it can see nowhere else. 

15. Therefore it often happens when the poor 
captive soul beholds itself in the inward root, and 
thinks what will follow when for it the external 
mirror breaks, that it is terrified, and plunges the 
body in fear and doubt. 

16. For it can look nowhere where its eternal rest 
might be, but it finds that it is in itself in utter 
unrest, moreover in a darkness; it has the external 
mirror only by way of loan. 

17. As long as the soul is in this body, it may 
indeed make shift with the sun-mirror, for the sun 
has in its root the inner fire as the principle of the 
Father. From this fire the soul receives a lustre or 
mirror in the essence of the body, so that it is able 
thus in this earthly, transitory fife to be in joy. 
But when the external mirror breaks, that is at an 
end ; and the soul's fire goes into the eternal house 
of mourning, into the centre of darkness. 

18. The soul has in the time of the outer body 
three mirrors or eyes of all the three worlds. The 
mirror to which it turns itself, by that does it see. 
But it has no more than one as a natural right, 
namely the fire-flash, the fourth form of the dark 
world, where the two inward worlds separate (one 
into the darkness, the other into the light), and 
where its eternal origin is. The world into which 



THE FIFTH POINT 81 

the soul introduces its will, in the same it receives 
also substance, viz. a spiritual body. For this sub- 
stance becomes for the soul's fire a food, or matter 
of its burning. 

19. And therefore God has introduced the soul 
into flesh and blood, that it might not so easily 
become susceptible of the wrath-essence. Thus it 
has its delight meanwhile in the mirror of the sun, 
and rejoices in the sidereal essence. Presented to 
it is (1) the light-world in its true fire, (2) the dark 
world in the fire-root, (3) the outer elemental world 
in the astral source. Among them hovers the great 
mystery of the soul's fire. 

20. The world to which the soul unites and 
abandons itself, from that it receives substance in 
its imagination. But because it has in Adam 
turned itself to the spirit of this world, and carried 
its imagination into the same, its highest desire is 
now in the essence of the sun and stars, and by this 
desire it draws the spirit of the outer world with its 
substance of four elements continually into itself, 
and has its greatest joy therein; in which it is in 
a strange lodging as guest, for the abyss is beneath 
it, and there is great danger. 

21. Here external Reason says: God has created 
the soul in flesh and blood in the outer world, what 
harm can that do it? This Reason knows no more 
of the soul's origin than a cow does of a new stable 
door. She looks at it, and it seems to her to be 
strange ; so also to external Reason the inner world 
seems to be something strange. 

22. It finds itself in the outer world, and aspires 



82 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS 

after that which the outer world has ; and yet finds 
in itself the inner world, which continually arraigns 
the soul before God's wrath. It finds also the 
light -world, to which the inward desires of the soul's 
principle look. It feels indeed the longing after 
God, but the outer world hinders this and covers 
it up; so that the desire after God's world cannot 
kindle fire in itself. If that were done, then would 
the light-world be manifest in the first principle, 
and the noble image of God would be revealed. 

23. This is also hindered by the devil, who 
possesses the root of this world in the soul's fire. 
He is always holding up to the soul evil earthly 
things, or moving the root in the centre of Nature 
in the fierce wrath; so that the poor soul enkindles 
itself either in the wrath-fire in the evil poison- 
source, or else in fear and doubt of God's love. He 
has then carried the day, and sets before the soul 
external power, authority and honour, also the 
splendour and pomp of the outer world. Then 
the soul bites at this, and tickles itself therein with 
imagination; and yet cannot truly enjoy the same, 
for it is only a borrowed mirror. 

24. The poor soul is thus drawn away from God's 
light, and is sinking always into perdition, viz. into 
the dark house of misery, into the dark world. 
That did Adam prepare for us when he introduced 
his desire into earthliness. And thus the poor soul 
swims now in earthly flesh and blood, and is always 
eating of the tree of temptation of evil and good, 
and is drawn strongly by both; and the serpent's 
monstrous shape is in the midst, in the source of 



THE FIFTH POINT 83 

wrath, and continually blows up the anger and 
fierce wrath. 

25. Here then can the noble lily-branch nowhere 
recover itself, often also not recognize itself. It is 
oftentimes overwhelmed with the fierceness of 
malignit}^, so that it is as if it were wholly destroyed ; 
and it would be destroyed were the mirror of the 
Deity not turned towards it, in which the spirit 
of the will of the poor captive soul may recover 
itself, and regenerate itself therein. 

26. For in the mirror of the light-world the in- 
carnation of Christ is presented to the soul's spirit ; 
and the Word that became man stands in sound, 
and is in action. Therein may the soul's spirit 
recover itself and generate itself anew ; else it were 
often past help with the poor soul, when it is 
immersed in wrath and in the poison of the dark 
world. 

27. And thus we understand at bottom what the 
destruction of the noble tree, or the image of God, 
is, namely this : 

28. The entire man is in his being the three 
worlds. The soul's centre, viz. the root of the soul's 
fire, contains the dark world; and the soul's fire 
contains the first Principle as the true fire-world. 
And the noble image, or the tree of divine growth, 
which is generated from the soul's fire and buds 
forth through fierce wrathful death in freedom or 
in the world of fight, contains the light-world or the 
second Principle. And the body, which in the 
beginning was created out of the mixed substance 
which at creation arose from the light -world, the 



84 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS 

dark world and the fire-world, contains the outer 
world or the third mixed Principle. 

29. The right soul is the spirit of these three 
worlds, as God's Spirit is the spirit of all the three 
worlds. In the dark world it is wrathful, stern and 
an austere source, and is called God's anger. In 
the light -world it is lovely, gentle and joyous, and 
is the spirit from God's Heart, the Holy Spirit. 
In the outer world it is the spirit of air, as also of 
fire and water, and may be used as man pleases, 
all unto the great wonders. 

30. Thus is man according to the particular per- 
son the great mystery in the three worlds. The 
world to which he turns himself, in which he pro- 
duces fruit, the same is lord in him, and this world 
becomes manifest in him; the other two remain 
hidden. As fire is hidden in wood, so light or the 
light-world remains hidden in the wrathful dark 
world; as also in malignity, in the distemper of 
the inner world in the outer world. 

31. But if the light- world cannot become mani- 
fest in man so as to be lord, then the soul at the 
breaking of the outer world remains only in the 
dark world; for there it is no longer possible for 
the light -world to be kindled. There is for the light 
no longer any mirror that were turned towards the 
soul. The heart of God is not manifest therein, 
nor eternally can be (for the dark world must be, 
else the light would not be manifest) ; but here in 
this world that may be. 

32. And though a soul be plunged in the deepest 
abyss, and lies in the wrath of God, yet in the 



THE FIFTH POINT 85 

external light of the sun it has before it the light- 
mirror wherein the divine power reveals itself, as 
also the mirror of the incarnation of Christ, which 
in the inner dark world never is known. 

33. And our whole teaching is nothing else than 
how man should kindle in himself God's light-world. 
For if this be kindled, so that God's light shines 
in the soul's spirit, then the whole body hath light, 
as Christ says : If the eye be light, then is the whole 
body light (Matt. vi. 22, 23) . He means the soul's 
eye. And if the wrath of the dark world be kindled, 
then are body and soul dark, and have only a lustre 
from the sun. If the divine light be kindled, it 
burns in love and meekness; and if the wrath of 
the dark world be kindled, it burns in stinging envy 
and hate, in fierce rage, and flees away in the 
external mirror of the sun's light into pride, and 
will always be mounting above the source of love, 
whereupon follows scorn and contempt of meekness 
and of all that is lowly. 

34. And here man should prove or try himself, 
and recognize which world is lord in him. If he 
find that anger, wrath, envy, falsehood, lying and 
deceit is his desire; also pride, avarice, and con- 
tinual greed of honour and earthly pleasure, that 
he is but a perpetual itch for wantonness and lewd- 
ness; then he may know with certainty that he 
burns with anger, wrath, envy, falsehood, lying 
and deceit in the dark, viz. in the dark world's 
fire. For this fire gives such essence, desire and 
will. 

35. And the other desire, viz. earthly pleasure, 



86 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS 

pride, thirst for honour, avarice, and the perpetual 
wanton bestial itch of concupiscence, is the fruit 
which grows out of the dark world in the outer 
world. 

36. As love buds out of death (where the spirit 
of the will yields up itself to the fire of God, and 
sinks down as it were in death, but buds forth in 
God's kingdom with a friendly desire always to do 
well) ; so hath the will of wickedness given itself to 
perdition, viz. to wrathful, stern, eternal death, but 
buds forth with its twig in this corrupt world in 
outer nature, and bears such fruit. 

37. By this should every one learn to know him- 
self, he need only search for his distinctive property. 
To whatever his will constantly drives him, in that 
kingdom does he stand; and he is not a man as 
he accounts himself and pretends to be, but a 
creature of the dark world, viz. a greedy hound, a 
proud bird, a lustful animal, a fierce serpent, an 
envious toad full of poison. All these properties 
spring in him, and are his wood from which his fire 
burns. When the outer wood, or the substance of 
four elements, abandons him at his death, then the 
inner poisonous evil quality alone remains. 

38. What figure now must stand in such a qual- 
ity? None else but what was strongest amongst 
these properties ; this is figured in the hellish Fiat in 
his form, as a venomous serpent, a dog or other 
beast. The property to which the spirit of the will 
has given itself up, that same property is afterward 
the soul's image. And this is one part. 

39. Further, man should prove or try himself 



THE FIFTH POINT 87 

in his desire (for every man has these evil properties 
in him) , to see whether he finds in himself a constant 
longing to kill this poison and malignity; whether 
he be enemy to this poison; or whether he hath his 
delight in continually putting the false poison into 
operation, viz. in pride, covetousness, envy, licen- 
tiousness, lying and deceit. 

40. Now, if he find in himself that he hath his 
delight therein, and is always ready to put the same 
into practice, then he is not a man, as he accounts 
himself to be; but the devil in a strange form 
deceives him, so that he believes he is a man. But 
he bears not God's but the serpent's image; and is 
only in the external kingdom a likeness to an image 
of man, so long as he remains in this property so 
that this property is supreme lord. 

41. But if he find strife and combat within him, 
that his inner will always, yea, hourly, fights against 
these evil properties, suppresses them, and suffers 
them not to attain to evil being; that he would fain 
always do well, and yet finds that these evil prop- 
erties hinder him, so that he cannot accomplish 
what he would; and finds the desire for abstinence 
and repentance, that a perpetual desire after God's 
mercy springs in him, so that he would gladly do 
well if he could: 

42. This man may think and assuredly know 
that God's fire glimmers in him, and continually 
labours towards the light. It would fain burn, and 
is always giving essence for flame ; but is quenched 
by the evil humidity of this world, which Adam has 
introduced into us. 



88 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS 

43. But when the outer evil body with its vapours 
perishes, so that it can no longer obstruct the 
glimmering wick, then the divine fire becomes 
enkindled in its essence, and the divine image is 
figured according to the strongest quality which the 
man has here carried in his desire. If, however, he 
continue not in the above-mentioned warfare, but 
drops the struggle, he may again deteriorate most 
dangerously. 

44. The third proof and trial is this, that a man 
recognize in what being or figure he stands. If he 
find that he hath a constant desire after God, and 
in his desire is so strong that he can again break 
and transform into gentleness the evil essences, 
as often as for him a quality becomes enkindled; 
that he is able to let all go that shines and glitters 
in this world; that he can do good for evil; 
that he hath full mastery over all his worldly 
substance, be it money or goods, to give thereof 
to the needy and for God's truth to abandon it 
all; and freely and willingly for God's sake resign 
himself to misery in assured hope of that which 
is eternal: for him the divine power flows, so that he 
may kindle the light of the kingdom of joy therein; 
he tastes what God is. He is the most undoubted 
man, and carries the divine image with heavenly 
essence in himself even in the time of the outer 
body. 

45. There Jesus is born of the Virgin, and that 
man never dies. He lets pass from him only the 
earthly kingdom, which was to him in this time an 
opposition and hindrance, with which God has 



THE FIFTH POINT 89 

concealed him. For God will not cast pearls before 
swine ; they are hidden in Him. 

46. This same new man dwells not in this world ; 
neither doth the devil know him, only he is hostile 
to his essence, which contains the inward centre; 
for it impedes him that his will is not done. And 
therefore he incites the evil animal-men against him, 
to vex and persecute him, so that the true humanity 
remains concealed. 



90 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS 



CHAPTER VIII 

Of the right human essence from God's 
essence. 

1. The right true human essence is not earthly, 
nor from the dark world ; it is generated only in the 
light -world; it has no communion or fellowship 
with the dark world, nor with the outer world; 
there is a great bar, viz. death, between them. 

2. Not that there is nothing of the true essence 
in the external man. It is there; for it was given 
to Adam in his image. But it is shut up and lies 
in death, and cannot qualify; neither has it any 
motion in itself, unless it becomes quick in the power 
of the Deity. As it became quick in the Virgin 
Mary by God's motion and entrance; there the 
right human essence came again to life. 

3. So also in us the right human essence is not 
stirring, except we be born of God in Christ. 

4. In the baptism of infants the Word of God 
enters into union and connection with them in the 
covenant, and is the first stirring in this world ; as a 
smouldering in wood that begins to glimmer, but 
the wicklet is often after darkened and extin- 
guished. Moreover, in many a child that is begot- 
ten of wholly godless essence, it is not susceptible. 

5. Christ said : Suffer little children to come unto 
me, for of such is the kingdom of God (Mark x. 14) . 
Not dogs, wolves, toads or serpents, but children, 



THE FIFTH POINT 91 

in whom the essence is not wholly devilish. For 
many a child is baptized in the wrath of God, for 
which the parents are to blame. An evil tree bears 
evil fruit, says Christ. 

6. And though He is come into this world to 
save what was lost, yet it depends also on the 
essence of that which will let itself be helped. For 
an animal-man may attain the image [of God], if 
he turn round and suffer the Word that became 
man to draw him. If not, then he remains in his 
animal essence an evil beast. 

7. But we are not to suppose that baptism lays 
the first foundation of the human essence, and is 
wholly the first enkindling cause of the divine fire. 
No, that is not so; for a child becomes through 
the parents' essence a spirit, as also flesh and blood, 
with espousal of the constellation of the spirit 
ma j oris mundi. 

8. At the time when a child in the womb has 
attained to life, then immediately divine or hellish 
essence glimmers from the primal fount and origin. 

9. And if but a small spark of the divine essence 
be active, the child is susceptible of baptism. And 
though it should die unbaptized, yet the spark is 
in God's Mystery, and glimmers in God s king- 
dom, and is kindled in the fire of God. For it 
dies in the Mysterium of the Father, and glimmers 
up in the Mysterium of the Son who became man. 

10. The parents' baptism and covenant is its 
baptism and^ covenant. The reconciliation has 
taken place in human blood, in the right true human 
essence. God's word or heart has given itself to 



92 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS 

the shut up, dead, human essence; not to the 
earthly part, but to the heavenly part. Not to 
the part that Adam by his imagination introduced, 
which is earth; but to the part which was given 
to Adam from the angelic world, which he cor- 
rupted and poisoned with the earthly craving for 
in the craving earthly, coarse, animal flesh was 
produced. 

11. This part has the right human essence, and 
in this part God became man. And this same part 
has the ground of the angelic world, for it takes its 
origin from the angelic world. 

12. But if most frequently godless parents are 
immersed wholly in the wrath of God, and so beget 
children in. the wrath ; then is their seed shut up 
in death, and has in it nothing of the right human 
essence, which is moving, save only what the 
constellation in the spirit ma j oris mundi has in 
itself. There certainly the divine power has some 
movement; but the wrath's power exists as 
opposite, and is heavy. Nevertheless, there is no 
impossibility; for the incarnation of God, his 
becoming man, is presented to all souls in the life's 
light. 

18. But baptism contains something else. God's 
essence (as the water of eternal life born of God's 
gentleness) must move the right human essence 
(with Adam shut up in death), and yield itself up 
there as a new life or a living essence. God's water 
must baptize; the Holy Spirit must be the operant. 

14. But I say, according to my knowledge, that 
the water of eternal life, upon which the Holy 



THE FIFTH POINT 93 

Spirit broods, will hardly yield itself up to the 
poison of wrath and death, where there is not an 
essence of desire [toward God] . 

15. I say, then, that a child (as soon as it has life 
in the womb) is, so far as the divine essence is 
moving in the heavenly part, already baptized by 
the Holy Spirit, and attains the incarnation of 
Christ. For baptism depends not on the priest's 
power, that the Holy Spirit should wait upon him. 
The incarnation of Christ waited not upon man's 
power, but upon the goal that God set in his 
covenant. This goal was blessed. Therefore the 
angel said to Mary : Blessed art thou among 
women. The goal lay in her, and was blessed, 
and blessed her also when God's heart awakened 
the goal. 

16. This goal reached back to Adam, and for- 
ward to the last man. When God became man, 
the goal was awakened in the heavenly part; not 
only in Mary, but also in Adam and Eve, and all 
their children who had given themselves up to God ; 
these were all blessed in the goal. 

17. For that is the covenant of grace which God 
established with Adam and Eve. This covenant 
is in all human essence, but not in devilish essence. 

18. But baptism is the seal that God affixed to 
the covenant, as in the old testament circumcision. 
In baptism God gives divine water to the human 
race as a pledge and seal; but the covenant is 
already there before baptism; it was made in 
paradise, yea before the foundation of the world. 
As soon as a soul is stirring in the womb, so that 



94 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS 

a human soul is born, it is in the covenant. For 
Christ has given himself to the fire of God, to the 
principle, and fulfilled the covenant, and is become 
the result of the testament. 

19. This result waits not upon any external ordi- 
nance, upon the delusion of the outer man; but as 
soon as a soul is born from the principle, it is in the 
result of the testament, so far as the divine life is 
moving in it. But not in godless souls; in them 
the divine fife must first be born. God's wrath 
swallows up many a soul still in essence, before it 
attains the principle ; because it is from false essence, 
from evil seed of the parents. 

20. Reason says: What can a child do to this, 
that the parents are wicked? Nay, what can even 
God do? It is in the parents' power to get a child. 
What can God do to this, that whores and profli- 
gates creep together? Though the false tree 
springs not thus from this line only, but also in 
marriage. Man is free; if he awaken no life, his 
seed remains an essence. Shall God, because of the 
child's innocency, cast pearls before swine? The 
kingdom of heaven confronts it; let it enter, God 
closes the kingdom of heaven to none. 

21. But a bad man is shut up in body and soul, 
why not also in the seed? The seed is truly the 
fruit of his body. If we would reap good wheat, 
we of right sow wheat; but if thistle seed be sown, 
a thistle grows from it. Must God then change 
that into wheat? Has not the sower power to 
sow in his field what he pleases? Or wilt thou 
say: What can the thistle do to this, that it is 



THE FIFTH POINT 95 

a thistle and pricks? It belongs not among the 
wheat, but grows up itself along with it. 

22. God were certainly content though no thistle- 
child did grow; it is not his ordinance. But the 
devil sows weeds amongst the wheat, viz. in the 
heart of man. Why does man suffer this and de- 
stroy himself, so that his essence becomes a thistle- 
seed, and yields weeds to the fire in the wrath of 
God? It is not all attributable to the seed, but 
depends on the field. Many a noble grain perishes 
in the evil field's essence. The heavens with the 
sun give life and power to all growth. The sun 
makes no weeds, neither desires any ; but the essence 
in the field makes oftentimes another thing, and 
destroys the good. 

23. So also in man. Many a curse sticks which 
one wishes the other, when the other has provoked 
it, and is apt for it; as indeed is common among 
godless married people, one wishing the other the 
devil and hell-fire. If then they both be godless, 
should not then their godless will be realized to 
them, by their begetting godless children? There 
is not anything that is good in them, what good 
thing then shall come out of them? What can God 
do to this? He sets his word and teaching before 
them, and announces to them their destruction. 
If they will not regard it, let them go whither they 
please. So too is their seed; and thus many a child 
is born a thistle and evil beast, and is baptized in the 
wrath of God. 

24. For, of what essence the soul's spirit is, in 
such an essence it receives also the divine nature 



96 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS 

in the covenant : one in the power of light, in love ; 
another in the power of wrath, in darkness. 

25. The covenant at baptism stands firm. Every 
child is baptized in the covenant; the Spirit of 
God baptizes each one, if we observe the customary 
form, but in accordance with the child's property. 
Often the father and mother, as also the baptizer, 
are godless, and only evil beasts, and there is no real 
earnestness. The outward pomp and the money is 
the main point with them ; they despise the mystery. 
Here the child is wholly in the property of wrath. 
Who then shall baptize? None other than the 
wrath of God in his covenant, for that men do but 
make a mock of it. 

26. Thus the source of wrath seizes the new 
spirit, works powerfully in it, and brings forth fruit 
to perdition. As St. Paul says of the other testa- 
ment, that the wicked man receives it unto judg- 
ment, not discerning the Lord's body (1 Cor. xi. 
29). That is, he distinguishes not in himself the 
heavenly part of his essence from the earthly, to put 
his will into the heavenly and offer this up to God ; 
but deems all common, as an ox eats the fodder. 

27. Therefore the wrath of God springs in him, so 
that he doth not break off his will from the earthly 
and repent of his wickedness. His heavenly part 
cannot become partaker of God's body, because 
he cannot awaken the essence of the heavenly 
part. Thus it has no mouth to receive God's body, 
the mouth being shut up in death. The earthly 
part, however, receives Christ's body, but according 
to the property of wrath, according to the prop- 



THE FIFTH POINT 97 

erty of the dark world; for the testament must 
stand. 

28. In like manner is baptism. According as 
the soul's essence is in being, so also does it enjoy 
God's covenant. It were better a wholly godless 
child were not baptized, and that a wicked man in 
his sins without conversion did not touch God's 
testament; for it brings them both only power to 
perdition. God's covenant is never moved without 
fruit. God works in his covenant according to his 
word. 

29. As is the soul which moves the covenant, so 
is the medicament in the covenant, and in such a 
power the Spirit of God works in love and wrath; 
for he is the spirit of every life, and assimilates 
himself to every life. He is in every thing as the 
thing's will and property is, for one property seizes 
the other. What the soul wills, that he wills also, 
and thereinto the soul enters. 

30. It is all magical; what the will of a thing 
wills, that it receives. A toad takes only poison 
into itself; though it sit in the best apothecary's 
shop; the like also does a serpent. Every thing 
takes only its own property into itself ; and though 
it eat the substance of a good property, yet it con- 
verts all in itself into its own property. Though 
a toad should eat honey, yet this becomes poison in 
it. As indeed the devil was an angel ; but when he 
willed nothing good, his heavenly essence became 
to him hellish poison, and his evil will remained evil 
one time as another. 

31. We are therefore highly to consider our life, 



98 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS 

what we would do and be at. We have evil and 
good in us. The one wherein we draw our will, 
its essence becomes active in us; and such a prop- 
erty we draw also from without into us. We 
have the two Mysteries, the divine and the devilish 
in us, of the two eternal worlds, and also of the 
outer world. What we make of ourselves, that we 
are; what we awaken in ourselves, that is moving 
in us. If we lead ourselves to good, then God's 
Spirit helps us; but if we lead ourselves to evil, 
then God's wrath and anger helps us. Whatever 
we will, of that property we obtain a leader, and 
thereinto we lead ourselves. It is not God's will 
that we perish, but his wrath's and our own will. 

And thus we understand the fifth point.. How 
a life perishes, and how out of good an evil comes, 
and out of evil a good, when the will turns round. 



THE SIXTH POINT 

or the life of darkness, wherein the devils 
dwell; what birth and quality it hath. 

CHAPTER IX 

1. The life of darkness is repugnant to all life 
of light; for the darkness gives fierce and hostile 
essence, and the life of light gives love-essence. 

2. In the darkness there is in the essence only 
a perpetual stinging and breaking, each form being 
enemy to the other — a contrarious essence. Each 
form is a liar to itself, and one says to the other, 
that it is evil and adverse to it, that it is a cause 
of its restlessness and fierceness. Each thinks in 
itself : If only the other form were not, thou wouldst 
have rest; and yet each of them is evil and false. 
Hence it is, that all that is born of the dark property 
of wrath is lying, and is always lying against the 
other forms, saying they are evil; and yet it is 
itself a cause thereof, it makes them evil by its 
poisonous infection. 

3. Thus are they all, and lying is their truth. 
When they speak lies, they speak from their own 
forms and properties. And so also are their 
creatures. Therefore Christ said: The devil is a 
liar and murderer from the beginning (John viii. 
44) . For each form desires to murder the other, 



100 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS 

and yet there is no killing; but the greater the 
strife is, the greater becomes their murderous 
life. 

4. And therefore it is called an eternal death 
and enmity, where nothing but contrariety arises. 
For there is nothing that could abolish the strife, 
nothing that could hold in check a single form. 
The more it were resisted, the greater would be 
the fierceness; like a fire that is stirred, whereby it 
burns but the more. 

5. Thus the fierce wrathful kingdom can be 
extinguished by nothing, save only by God's light, 
by which it becomes wholly gentle, lovely and full 
of joy. And neither can that be; for if the dark 
kingdom were to be kindled with the light, the light 
would have no root to its nature and property, no 
fire could be generated, neither were there any 
light, nor any power, but all were a nothing. 

6. Hence the kingdom of wrath must be, for it 
is a cause of the fire-world and the light-world, and 
all is God's. But all is not acknowledged as or 
called God, as the dark world has another prop- 
erty, and the light-world is a cause of the fierce- 
ness and terror of the dark property; for the dark- 
ness is terrified at the light, and stands in eternal ter- 
ror because the light -world dwells in it. It trembles 
eternally before the light, and yet cannot apprehend 
it ; but is only a cause of life and of movement. And 
thus all must be subservient to the glory of God. 

7. The lif e of darkness has many forms ; it is not 
one and the same property. As we are to recognize 
by the creatures of this world, where one is always 



THE SIXTH POINT 101 

worse than the other, also has its subsistence in 
a different source from the other; who nevertheless 
all live in the sun's power and light, by which they 
are meekened. 

8. But if the sun were to be extinguished, then 
would the deep be wrathful and stinging. Then 
we should soon see the property of the dark world, 
how all creatures would become poisonous and 
evil. 

9. For every life is rooted in poison. The light 
alone resists the poison, and yet is a cause that the 
poison lives and faints not. 

10. We are therefore to recognize that the life 
of darkness is only a fainting poison, like a dying 
source; and yet there is no dying there. For 
the light-world stands opposed to the mirror of 
darkness, whereby the darkness is eternally in 
terror. 

11. The dark life is like a terror, where the flash 
and terror is always mounting upwards, as if it 
would quit the life and fly out above it. And hence 
arises pride, so that the devil is always wishing 
to be above God; it is his proprium, his life's figure 
is so, and he cannot do otherwise. Just as a poison 
rages and pierces, as if it would break loose from 
the member; 

12. So is the life of darkness in itself. The 
poisonful essences make such an inward disposi- 
tion, and from the disposition proceeds such a 
will-spirit. There is such a property therein, and 
consists of seven forms, according to the centre of 
Nature with its principle. As the life of joy con- 



102 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS 

sists of seven forms by right of Nature, so also 
does the life of sorrowfulness. That which in 
the light gives joy, in the darkness gives sorrow- 
fulness. 

13. And yet it is not to be thought that the life 
of darkness therefore sinks down into misery, that 
it would forget itself as if it were sorrowful. There 
is no sorrowing; but what with us on earth is 
sorrowing according to this property, is in the dark- 
ness power and joy according to the property of the 
darkness. For sorrowfulness is a thing that is 
swalllowed up in death. But death and dying is 
the life of the darkness, just as anguish is the life of 
the poison. The greater the anguish becomes in 
the poison, the stronger becomes the poison-life, as 
is to be seen in the external poison. 

14. We cannot, then, say of the devil that he 
sits in dejection, as if he were faint-hearted. There 
is no faint-heartedness in him, but a constant will 
to kindle the poison-source more, that his fierce- 
ness may become greater. For this fierceness is 
his strength, wherein he draws his will to mount 
above the thrones and inflame them. He would 
be a mighty lord in the poison-source, for it is the 
strong and great life. But the light is his misery 
and dread; that checks his bravery. He is terri- 
fied at the light; for it is his true poison, which 
torments him. Because he abandoned it, it now 
resists him. Of which he is ashamed, that he is 
thus a deformed angel in a strange image. He 
would be content with the source of wrath, if only 



THE SIXTH POINT 103 

the light were not so near him. Shame is therefore 
so great in him that he grows furious, and kindles 
his poisonous source more and more, so that his 
figure becomes increasingly horrible, and the divine 
image is not recognized in him. He aims only at 
how he may storm and rage against God, as if he 
were a foreign thing, or a foreign power, as if he 
had a foreign kingdom; whereas he is poor, and 
the dark kingdom is not his, but he is only a pris- 
oner in it. It is God's abyss ; he is only a creature 
therein. He would be lord therein, and yet is 
but a juggler with the fierceness; although he 
must act according to the property. And this is 
also a wonder before the stern might of eternity. 
It is as a sport wherewith the stern might hath 
its dissipation, by which it is distinguished what 
evil or good, joy or sorrow, is; and that the 
creatures in the light -world have cause to humble 
themselves. And yet God created no devil, nor 
destined Lucifer for the dark world. But this is 
enmity in Lucifer, that he was an angel, and 
that the light is so near him that he became an 
apostate. 

15. There is no pain in the creatures which have 
been created in the dark world ; for they are of the 
fierce wrathful property, and know nothing of the 
light. Fierceness is their strength and might, and 
enmity their will and life. The more evil and 
hostile a creature is in the dark world, the greater 
is its might. As the powerful tyrants of this world 
often exhibit their power in malignity, so that men 



104 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS 

must fear them, or as tame animals are afraid of 
ferocious ones; so has this likewise a property in 
the dark world. 

16. If we will rightly consider the property of 
the dark world, let us look upon the malice and 
pride of this world, which is a figure or type. For 
all malice, falsehood, pride and covetousness has 
its root from the dark world; it is the property of 
the dark world, whether it be recognized in men or 
beasts. 

17. For this world rests upon the foundation of 
the dark world. The dark world gives to this world 
essence, will and quality. And had not the good 
been introduced also at creation, there would be 
no other doing or will in this world than in the dark 
world. But the divine power and the sun's light 
hinder that. As is to be seen among men and 
beasts, how there is a biting, hating and striking, 
and an arrogant self-will, each wishing to rule over 
the other, to kill and devour the other, and elevate 
itself alone; also to trample upon everything with 
guile, wrath, malice and falsehood, and make itself 
lord. 

18. In like manner the dark world has such a 
property. What all wicked men in this world do 
in their malice and falsehood, that also the devils 
do in the dark world; and what the poisonous evil 
worms and beasts in their malignity do, that also 
the other creatures do in the dark world. Though 
they are without such a body, yet they have such 
a property in their spiritual body ; and though they 



THE SIXTH POINT 105 

have a body, yet it is after the fashion of spirit, as 
the devils have one. 

19. The birth, being, essence and dominion of 
the dark world lies principally in the first four 
forms of Nature, viz. in the source of anguish, in 
an exceedingly strong and powerful dominion, 
where all in the essence is divulged. For gentleness 
is the enmity of the wrath-power, and each is against 
the other. 

20. Else, if they should be one, there would 
necessarily be but one quality; and if there were 
also only one will, the eternal wonders could not 
become manifest. But the manifold quality makes 
the eternal wonders manifest. For eternity could 
not otherwise become manifest, nor attain to being, 
save through the enkindling, viz. in the stern harsh 
attraction in which the dark world stands, and in 
which the fire -world and also the light -world take 
their rise. All is only a single essence or substance, 
but it separates itself into three properties. One 
property is not separated from the other, but each 
gives the other; as is to be seen in fire and light, 
as also in the matter from which the fire burns. 

21. And man need not search deeper, for he 
is himself the essence of all beings. But because 
he has in his creation turned aside from his original 
order, and introduced and awakened another quality 
in himself, it is necessary for him to inquire how 
he may re-enter into his eternal order and quality, 
and generate himself anew. And then, how he 
may extinguish the fierce wrathful quality which 



106 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS 

is moving in him, for all is active in him and draws 
him, both evil and good. Therefore he should learn 
how to resist wrath, and walk in meekness, in the 
quality of light and love. 

22. Man, moreover, has no law except he enkindle 
himself in the dark world's property, and walk 
according to this property. Independently of that, 
all is free to him. Whatsoever he doth in meekness 
and love is without restriction for him, and is his 
proper being; it consists not in any one's name or 
presumption. 

23. All that is grown from one root is and belongs 
to one tree, it is but one manner of fruit; un- 
less it corrupt itself, so that the very essence 
changes. 

24. As long as a thing remains in the essence 
from which it arose, it has no law; but if it with- 
draw therefrom into another quality, the first 
quality hangs unto it, and is in conflict with the 
other. And then law ensues, that it should return 
again into that which it originally was, and be one, 
not two; for one thing should exercise only one 
dominion, not two. Man was created in the 
dominion of love and gentleness, as in God's Being, 
and therein he was to remain. 

25. But because he was awakened another do- 
minion, viz. fierce wrath, he is now in combat and 
strife, and has laws, that he may mortify and 
abandon the fierceness, and be in one dominion 
again. Since then both dominions are become 
powerful in him, and the dominion of wrath has 
overpowered love, he must wholly break to pieces 



THE SIXTH POINT 107 

in substance, and be re-born again from the first 
root. And therefore he has in this twofold being 
laws, how he should conduct himself and generate 
a will-spirit unto the eternal dominion. 

26. All this lies in his power. He may bring 
forth the spirit of wrath or the spirit of love, and in 
accordance with the same he is separated whither 
and into which world he belongs; for he separates 
himself. 

27. But the law continues over him as long as he 
is in this life (field) . Then, when the weed sepa- 
rates from this field of the body, it is in one dominion 
again, where it shall remain eternally; for after 
that there is nothing more to give it law, inasmuch 
as it is wholly one in its will, either to do evil or 
good. 

28. But in this external life man is in combat and 
strife. Two dominions, qualities and laws repose in 
him. The divine unto love and righteousness ; and 
the wrathful in the rising of pride in the power of 
fire, in the stern, harsh, hellish covetousness, envy, 
anger and malice. The one to which the spirit 
unites itself, of that dominion it is. The other 
hangs unto it, and reproaches it to its face as a 
perjured wretch and an apostate; but neverthe- 
less draws it, and will have it. Thus life is in a 
desperate strait between the two, and is at odds 
with itself. 

29. But if it resolve rashly, and abandon itself 
wholly to the wrath, then the fierce wrath destroys 
the first image according to God. And if it can- 
not entirely, because the divine power hinders that, 



108 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS 

then it would cast the whole man headlong; and 
many a one is plunged into despair in this anguish, 
so that he lays violent hands on himself. 

30. Thus the soul with the image falls unto the 
wrathful, dark world; and the image is brought 
into a hellish figure, into a form of its property 
which it had here. So it fared also with the devils, 
who have lost their first image. 

31 Every devil has an image according to his 
property, according to the figure of the wrath, 
in accordance with its quality; like as there are 
horrible worms or evil beasts, and such a thing has 
also the lost soul to expect. 

32. External Reason supposes that hell is far 
from us. But it is near us. Every one carries 
it in himself, unless he kill the hellish poison with 
God's power, and bud forth therefrom as a new 
twig, which the hellish quality cannot seize or 
touch (rug en). 

33. Though indeed the fierceness of hell is recog- 
nized more in one place than in another, all 
according to the hellish dominion, where the upper 
dominion is powerful in various places in the locus 
of this world; all according to the fire enkindling 
of King Lucifer, as in many places of the earth, 
as also in the deep between the stars and the 
earth, is the hellish quality to be discerned above 
other places, where the inner fierceness extends 
to the external principle. Here then are distinct 
dominions of devils, also of the other hellish 
properties ; here the fierce wrath of God has strongly 



THE SIXTH POINT 109 

inflamed itself, and now burns until the judgment 
of God. 

34. Every man carries heaven and hell within 
hi min this world. The property which he awakens, 
the same burns in him, and of that fire is the soul 
susceptible. And when the body dies, the soul 
needs to go nowhither, but it is committed to the 
hellish dominion of which it is the property. Those 
devils who are of its property await it, and receive 
it into their dominion until the judgment of God. 
And though they are confined to no place, yet 
they belong to the same dominion, and the same 
quality they have everywhere. Wherever they 
go, they are in the same dominion and quality; 
for the abyss has no place, neither time nor space. 
As it was before the times of the world, when there 
was no place; so it is and remains so eternally in 
the abyss. 

35. And though the place of this world was given 
to Lucifer for a kingdom (for he was created 
therein) , yet he has been cast out from place and 
position, and dwells in the abyss, where he can 
never reach any place of the angelic kingdom; but 
is shut up in his own realm in the abyss, where he 
must bear eternal reproach as a prisoner. As is 
done to a malefactor, who is put into a dark dungeon 
away from all the beings of this world, where he 
must do without any mundane joy or pleasure and 
bear the reproach of his crime. 

36. So it fares also with the devils, and with all 
damned souls, who lie captive in the dark prison. 



_— -_ ««_ _. 



110 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS 

Nor do they desire to come out, because of the 
great reproach of their horrible form and image. 
And wherever they go, yet they never enjoy any 
good; there is among them no refreshment. But 
they lie in hell as the dead, or as eternally hungry, 
fainting and thirsty; and are only an evil poison- 
source. All is to them adverse and contrary. 
They have only a thirst after anguish and malice; 
these they devour eternally, and bring forth 
blasphemies upon themselves. The more horrible 
they can make their figure, the more pleasing that 
is to them. Like buffoons, who on earth would 
fain be always the greatest fools, give themselves 
a hideous appearance, and have their delight 
therein; so they do also eternally in hell, and 
accordingly they begin the game here on earth. As 
the tyrant delights when he can torment men, and 
spend their sweat in show and luxury, in foolish 
strange attire and behaviour, and ape the fool; so 
do also the devils in hell. And the luxury of this 
world in its strange garb is a true type of the hellish 
world. 

37. All the curious tassels and tufts which the 
proud man devises, and clothes his foolish man 
therewith, whereby he would be distinguished from 
the true children of God, are types of the hellish 
world. All his bedizenment, glittering show and 
ostentation, by which he withdraws himself from 
humility, is a hellish mirror; for the devil's pride 
will be like to none, it keeps itself distinct in this 
world. And the blind man understands not this, 
how the devil fools and deceives him, and thus only 



THE SIXTH POINT 111 

to mock God prefigures his own proud mask; so 
that the poor man does as he does, and thinks he is 
thereby fine, and better than other men, whereas 
we all arise and proceed from one body and spirit. 
But before God and his angels he is recognized 
only as a devil's mask, and is in the sight of heaven 
an abomination. As a fool in comparison with 
wisdom is but an abomination, so is also hypocritical 
pride an abomination before God and his angels, 
in presence of the noble image. The world still 
cleaves to this abomination, and therewith marks 
out the corrupt image of earthliness. 

38. He who sees a proud man sees the heavy fall 
of Adam, and a type of the hellish world; a half 
devil and half man, to whom the devil has con- 
tinual access. For he is the devil's servant in this 
world; the devil does his work through him, and 
the poor man knows it not, and so enters the devil's 
service to his eternal reproach. He thinks he is 
thereby fine and important, and is thereby in the 
sight of God only as a fool, who puts on strange 
clothing and takes to himself animal form. 



112 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS 



CHAPTER X 

Of the four elements of the devil and of the dark 
world; how we shall know them in this outer 
world. 

1. The first element of the dark world and of the 
devil is pride, the second covetousness, the third 
envy, the fourth anger. These four elements are 
everlastingly hatching a young son, who is called 
Falsehood. This son is also a true son of the 
corrupt Adam, whom he left behind him to be a 
lord of the world. He has become king in the 
world, and has possessed the whole world, and 
rules everywhere in the third principle. Whoever 
rightly knows this king, knows the four elements of 
the devil ; for in the dark world these four elements 
have entire dominion in spirit and body, and in all 
that is called being. 

2. And we see hereby clearly that this world 
rests upon the foundation of these four elements, 
and receives from them tendency, quality and will. 
For the son of these four elements rules on earth; 
he will have all obedient under him, and has four 
different races of his subjects. (1) The race of 
pride, which will be above all other, and will put 
itself on a level with none. (2) The race of 
covetousness, which will alone possess all, subdue all 
under it, and will have all. This second race is the 
son of the first, for pride will also have all, that 



THE SIXTH POINT 113 

it alone may be all. (3) The third race is envy, 
which is the son of covetousness. When it sees 
it cannot alone have all, it stings like a poison, and 
begrudges anything to any one. Its will in all 
things is either to draw to itself and possess alone, 
or to rage therein with an evil will. (4) The fourth 
race is anger, which is the son of envy. What it 
cannot attain with evil will, that it enkindles in the 
fire of wrath, and breaks it by force. It brings 
about war and slaughter, and would destroy every- 
thing. This race would subdue all by violence. 

3. These, then, are the four elements of the devil, 
all which four are in one another as one. One 
proceeds from the other, and one gives birth to the 
other. They take their origin from the dark 
Nature, viz. from sour, bitter, anguish and fire. 

4. But seeing God's power is for them an opposi- 
tion, so that in this world they have not full 
dominion, they have generated a crafty son, by 
whom they rule, who is called Falsehood. He takes 
the coat of divine colours upon him, that he may 
not be known ; and wishes to be called a son of truth 
and virtue, but is an imposter. He speaks in one 
way, and thinks and acts in another. He carries 
the lustre of God on his tongue, and the devil's 
power and poison in his heart. 

5. This is king on earth, and manages two king- 
doms. The first is called perdition; the second 
Babel, a confusion. The kingdom of perdition this 
king has clothed with strength and might; it is 
the garment of that kingdom. On the other king- 
dom, Babel, he has put a white shining garment. 



114 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS 

That must be to it in place of God, and with that 
the king rules on earth as if he were God. And 
the people worship this garment; and beneath it is 
the man of falsehood and deceit, and hath in him 
his mother the four elements, viz. pride, covetous- 
ness, envy and anger. 

6. Thus the four elements of the devil rule under 
a hypocritical coat, and men strive eagerly for this 
coat. Every one will put it on; but he who puts 
it on, puts on hell and God's wrath. The coat is 
honoured in God's stead, and is the coat which the 
wrath of God did put on Adam and Eve, when the 
devil deceived them, so that they fell from obedience 
to God. And it is the very same coat of which God 
from the beginning of the world has warned us, 
that we should not put it on; for the devil has 
his lodging in it. When we put it on, we take up 
our abode with the devil, and must do what he 
pleases; for he is host in that house, and rests in 
that coat. 

7. Because he is a prisoner of God, he puts his 
coat on us, and sends us therewith to Babel into 
his service, where we cannot but mock God; for 
we have on God's coat, and the devil lodged under 
it as guest. Thus the tongue gives God's good 
words, and the heart has the spirit of the four 
elements of wrath ; and God is therefore mocked by 
the devil, that God shall see that he, the devil, is lord 
and king over men, and esteems God's dominion 
in man only as a shining coat, in which he, the devil, 
is man, and has man captive in his arms. He covers 
him indeed with the coat, and allows man to call 



THE SIXTH POINT 115 

himself God's child ; but in this coat man does only 
his will for him, so that all that the devil cannot or 
may not do in the external kingdom, that man does 
for him in his service. The devil may not kill any 
one, and man does it readily to please him. Neither 
can the devil use God's creatures, and man misuses 
them willingly to please him, thereby to mock God. 
With this he practises pride and covetousness, also 
falsehood and malice, and accomplishes by them 
all that the devil would have; he shines also there- 
with as if he were God. 

8. The external kingdom is therefore become a 
perpetual murderous den of the devil. The false 
and pretended man (who calls himself a man, but is 
not) does butchery, and increases God's wrath, 
and kindles the dark world in this outer world, so 
that God's wrath continually burns in this world. 

9. Thus God's kingdom is hindered, and the 
devil's will done; and the devil remains a prince 
on earth, whereas otherwise he could accomplish 
nothing on earth. The pretended man is in his 
service, and does his will. Two species of men, 
then, dwell together on earth. The one are real 
true men, who serve God in the coat of humility 
and misery, whom the devil derides and torments 
them with the other species, and in their case brings 
all his wonders to pass by means of those who serve 
him. 

10. The other species also calls itself men, walk 
also in human form, but they are evil beasts. They 
put on the garment of their King, that is to say, 
Falsehood; and live in the power of the four 



116 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS 

elements of their king, viz. in pride, covetousness, 
envy and anger. 

11. Pride is the first virtue. It snatches the 
bread from the mouth of the real man, and coerces 
the wretched, that it may satisfy itself. It insists 
that nothing shall be on a level with it; it will be 
alone the fairest child in the house. It has put 
on the coat of dissimulation, and would be called 
righteous; people must honour it and bow them- 
selves before it. Nothing must compare itself to 
it. It will be lord, and says: I am modest in my 
demeanour. 

12. But its heart is covetousness. That is the 
wolf, and devours the sweat and labour of the 
wretched. Pride mounts up above all. It explores 
daily the wonders of God, to see how it may dis- 
semble and play the hypocrite. It affects to be 
friendly and chaste, as if it were a virgin full of 
modesty; and yet is a strumpet full of flaws, and 
at heart hates all virtue, chastity and righteous- 
ness. It is a perpetual enemy of love and humility. 
Whatever is simple, that it despises ; and yet forces 
the simple under its yoke. It says to the real true 
man: Thou art my dog, I will hunt thee whither 
I list. Thou art foolish, and I am wise; and it 
is itself the biggest fool. It forfeits God and the 
kingdom of heaven for a little while's delight of the 
eyes ; it plunges itself into darkness, and puts on the 
coat of anxiety. 

13. The second virtue of this King Falsehood is 
covetousness. This draws all to itself, and 
darkens the shining adornment of pride. It draws 



THE SIXTH POINT 117 

to itself evil and good promiscuously, and continu- 
ally fills pride full. And when it has filled it, it 
takes its son envy and torments pride therewith, 
so that it has no rest in its splendour. Envy 
stings incessantly in the desiring covetousness, as 
if it were mad and frantic; and tortures pride 
day and night, so that it never rests. Covetous- 
ness is the right coarse swinish beast; it desires 
more than it can eat. Its jaws are wide open day 
and night. It suffers not man to rest, and tor- 
ments him continually in its sordid filthiness, so 
that he has ah eager longing earthward, and toward 
the things the earth yields without any one's 
covetousness; only labour belongs thereto, and no 
covetousness. 

14. Covetousness plagues itself and is its own 
enemy; for it fills itself with pain and disquietude, 
and clouds man's understanding, so that he cannot 
recognize that all comes from the divine hand. It 
makes dark for man his life's light, consumes the 
body, and robs him of the divine senses and glory. 
It casts him into the pit of death, and brings him 
temporal and eternal death. It attracts dark 
matter into man's noble image, and makes of an 
angel a fierce wrathful devil. It creates the turba 
in body and soul, and is the horrible beast in 
the abyss of hell, for it is the cause of suffering 
and pain ; without it no pain could arise. It causes 
war and strife, for it is never satisfied. If it had 
all the world, it would want to have also the abyss ; 
for there is no place made for its rest. It builds up 
countries and kingdoms, and destroys them also 



118 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS 

again. It drives man into mere trouble and tur- 
moil ; it is simply the devil's heart and will. 

15. For pride is the brave spirit which grows 
from covetousness. It is the fair child that was to 
possess heaven; but covetousness has transformed 
it into a bastard-child, and has introduced it 
into Babel, into the mother of the great whore- 
dom on earth. There pride continually prosti- 
tutes itself to covetousness, and is but a bastard- 
child in the sight of God. It cannot possess 
heaven; it has its kingdom of heaven on earth. It 
makes court to King Falsehood, who takes all 
its labour, and gives it to the four elements of the 
devil in the dark world; and thither must pride 
follow also with covetousness, when the bag of 
anxious avarice breaks. The same is indeed so 
very just, and yet takes its covetousness with it 
into the abyss, that pride may have its delight 
therein. As a fool in his fool's dress, who toils 
and vexes himself that he may bring forth folly 
and please his spectators, that he may be an 
extravagant fool; so in like manner pride and cov- 
etousness is God's fool and the devil's juggler, who 
hath his delight in this, that he can make of God's 
image a fool's image. 

16. The third virtue is envy, in the four elements 
of the devil, in the kingdom of falsehood. The 
same is a sting, a rager and raver, like an evil 
poison. It can abide nowhere, and has no resting- 
place Its mother covetousness allows it no rest; 
it must always rage and rave. It must enter into 
that in which it is not generated. It is the mouth 



THE SIXTH POINT 119 

of covetousness, a perpetual liar and slanderer. It 
pierces into its neighbour's heart, and wounds it. 
It devours itself for very poisonful hunger, and yet 
never has enough. It causes restlessness without 
limit or measure. It is the greatest poison and the 
eye of hell, whereby the devil sees in the soul and 
body of man. Nothing is like unto it. It is no 
fire, but the sting of fire. It brings about all ill, 
and yet finds no rest; the more it pushes on, the 
more frantic it is. It is a famished poison. It 
needs no being, and yet rages in being. It makes 
man more than mad, so that he desires to storm 
and rave against God. It is the essence of hell 
and of wrath, and makes of love the greatest enmity. 
It grudges any one anything, and yet is itself a 
starved nothing. 

17. Envy is the devil's will-spirit; and the man 
who takes it as a lodging, receives the devil and 
God's wrath ; for it brings hellish torture and pain. 
It is the eternal hostile torment and unrest, and 
destroys the noble image of God ; for it is the enemy 
of God and of all creatures. 

18. The fourth virtue, in the four elements in 
the kingdom of falsehood of the devil, is anger, 
rage. This is the right hell-fire; for anger is 
generated between covetousness and envy. It is 
the fire and life of envy. What envy cannot do, 
that anger accomplishes. Anger takes body and 
soul together, and runs like a raging devil. It 
would destroy and shatter everything; it runs 
against walls and strongholds. And though it 
burst itself, still it is furious, like a mad dog that 



120 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS 

bites and kills all; and is so venomous in its wrath, 
that, what it cannot overpower, it nevertheless 
poisons. This is the true podagra of the world. 
When pride in its hypocritical coat cannot get the 
mastery by guile and falsehood, it must then give 
effect to the fourth virtue, which strikes with the 
fist and brings about war. Oh, how merry is the 
devil when his four elements rule thus! He still 
thinks he is lord on earth. For though he is a pris- 
oner, yet the animal-men perform his office well; 
and accordingly he holds men in derision, that they 
are and do worse than he himself can do. 

19. These are, then, the four elements of the 
dark world, in which the devil opines to be a God; 
and therewith he rules on earth by his faithful son 
Falsehood. This latter is the smug kitling, who 
before gives good words, and yet always has the 
mouse in view. Can it but catch it: Oh, how brisk 
and jocund it is when it can bring the roast meat 
to the devil! With these four elements man is 
surrounded, and lodges in the country of the false 
king. They shoot him at all hours to the heart, 
and would destroy his noble image. He must 
always be at war against them, for they lodge with 
him and in him; they make thrusts continually at 
him, and would destroy his choicest jewel. 

20. If but one of these four elements obtain in 
man power to qualify, this one enkindles all the 
others; and they straightaway rob him of his noble 
image, and make of him a mask of the devil. And 
no man who allows to these four elements power 
to qualify can with truth say of himself, that he 



THE SIXTH POINT 121 

is a man; for he qualifies into the devil's property, 
and is an enemy of God. And though the devil 
clothe him with the hypocritical coat, so that he 
is able to give good words and knows how to be 
elegant in his manners, that men think he is a child 
of God, yet he is not a man as long as these four 
elements have the upper-hand in him; but he is a 
diabolized man, half devil and half man, till he 
make his measure full: then he is an entire devil in 
human shape. 

21. Let every one, therefore, learn to know him- 
self, — what kind of properties rule in him. If he 
find that all these four elements, or one only, rule 
in him, he has to take the field against them, or 
it will turn out ill in the end. He will not be 
permitted to comfort himself with the kingdom of 
heaven. Only let him not suffer the devil to wrap 
him round with the hypocritical cloak, as happens 
when men live in these four elements, and subtly 
flatter themselves with the sufferings of Christ. 
That must be the covering of this impostor. The 
impostor might retain his dominion, if he did not 
tickle himself with Christ's satisfaction. 

22. Oh, how the shining coat of Christ will be 
stript off thee! Then will be seen standing in 
Babel the whore with the four virtues. It is not 
merely a question of taking comfort, but of keep- 
ing down the impostor, lest he become master in 
the house. He must not bear rule, but righteous- 
ness, love, humility and chastity, and constant 
cheerful well-doing. Not dissembling and giving 
good words, but doing. There must be doing : viz. 



122 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS 

striving against the devil's will, contenting oneself 
with little, in patience shutting oneself up in hope 
in God, resisting the four evil elements and taking 
in God's four elements, which are love, meekness, 
mercy, and patience in hope. These should man 
awaken in himself, and therewith continually fight 
against the devil's four elements. 

23. Man must here be at war against himself, if 
he wishes to become a heavenly citizen. He must 
not be a lazy sleeper, and with gormandizing and 
swilling fill his belly, whereby the devil's elements 
begin to qualify; but he must be temperate, sober 
and vigilant, as a soldier that stands before his 
enemy. For God's wrath fights continually against 
him; he will have enough to do to defend 
himself. 

24. For the devil is his enemy, his own corrupt 
flesh and blood is his enemy, God's wrath is his 
enemy within him, and the whole world is his 
enemy. Wherever he looks he sees enemies, who 
all desire to rob him. 

25. Therefore fighting must be the watchword, 
not with tongue and sword, but with mind and 
spirit; and not give over. Though body and soul 
should break, yet God must remain the strength of 
the heart, as David says (Psal. lxxiii. 26). And 
though a man should see that the whole world were 
godless, if he purpose becoming a child of God, he 
must nevertheless continue steadfast. 

26. And though it should seem to him that he 
were alone in this path, and the whole world should 
say: Thou art a fool, and art mad! yet he should 



THE SIXTH POINT 123 

be as if he were dead in the world, and heard that 
from the mouth of the devil, who is his worst 
enemy. He should nowhere give ground ; but think 
that in his purpose he pleases God, and that God 
himself in him is his purpose; that he would thus 
deliver him from the devil, and bring him into his 
kingdom. Amen. 



SEX PUNCTA MYSTICA 

OR 

A SHORT EXPLANATION OF 

SIX MYSTICAL POINTS 

BY 

JACOB BOHME 



Written in the year 1620 



PREFACE 

The precious knowledge is not found unless the 
soul have once conquered in the assault and struck 
down the devil, so that it obtains the knight's 
garland, which the gracious virgin Chastity puts 
upon it as a token of victory that it has overcome 
in its dear champion Christ. Then the wonderful 
knowledge rises, but with no perfection. 



127 



THE FIRST POINT 

On the blood and water of the soul. 

1. All that is substantial and tangible is in this 
world. Now, since the soul is not a substance or 
entity in this world, neither is its blood and water 
a substance or entity in this world. 

2. Certainly the soul with its blood and water is 
in the outer blood and water; but its substance is 
magical. For the soul is also a magical fire, and 
its image or form is generated in the light (in the 
power of its own fire and light) from the magical 
fire ; and yet is a veritable image in flesh and blood, 
but in the original state thereof. 

3. As God's wisdom has being, and yet it, wis- 
dom, is not a being ; so the soul with its image has 
being, and yet it, the soul, is only a magical fire, but 
its sustenance is from its substance. 

4. As a fire must have substance if it is to burn, 
so likewise the magical fire of the soul has flesh, 
blood and water. There would be no blood if the 
tincture of fire and light were not in water. This 
tincture is the ens or life of wisdom (which has in 
it all the forms of of Nature), and is the other 
magical fire. 

5. For it gives all colours; and from its form 
goes forth divine power in the gentle nature of the 
light (understand, according to the property of the 

129 



130 SIX MYSTICAL POINTS 

light in it) ; and according to the property of the 
fire in it, it is a sharpness of transmutation. It can 
bring everything to its highest degree; although it 
is not a live spirit, but the supreme ens. 

6. Hence also the tincture is such an ens in water, 
and introduces thereinto the property of fire and 
of light, with all the powers of Nature; whereby 
it transforms the water into blood ; and this it does 
in the outer and inner water, as in the outer and 
inner blood. 

7. The inner blood of the divine substantiality is 
also magical; for it is Magic which makes it into 
substance. It is spiritual blood, which outer nature 
cannot touch (rug en), but by imagination only. 
The inner imagination introduces the outer will into 
the inner blood, whereby the flesh and blood of the 
divine substantiality is corrupted, and the noble 
image of the likeness of God is eclipsed. 

8. The soul's flesh and blood is in the highest 
mystery, for it is divine substantiality. And when 
the outer flesh and blood die, it falls unto the outer 
mystery, and the outer mystery falls unto the 
inner. 

9. And every magical fire has its brightness and 
darkness in itself; on account of which a final day 
of separation is appointed, when all must pass 
through a fire and be proved, what shall be fit for 
it or not. Then everything goes into its own magic, 
and thereafter is as it was from eternity. 



THE SECOND POINT 

On the election of grace. On good and evil. 

1. God is from eternity alone all. His essence 
divides itself into three eternal distinctions. One 
is the fire -world, the second the dark world, and 
the third the light-world. And yet they are but 
one essence, one in another; but one is not the 
other. 

2. The three distinctions are alike eternal and 
without bounds, and confined in no time nor place. 
Each distinction shuts itself in itself in a being; 
and its qualification is in accordance with its prop- 
erty, and in its qualification is also its desire, as 
the centrum naturae. 

3. And the desire is its making, for desire makes 
being where there is none, and that in the essence 
of the desire, according to the property of the 
desire. And all is together only a Magia, or a 
hunger after being. 

4. Each form makes being in its desire; and each 
form fulfils itself out of the mirror of its bright- 
ness, and has its seeing in its own mirror. Its 
seeing is a darkness for another mirror, its form 
is hidden to another eye; but in feeling there is a 
difference. 

5. For each form derives its feeling from the 
original state of the first three forms in Nature, viz. 

131 



132 SIX MYSTICAL POINTS 

from sour, bitter and anguish; and yet in these three 
there is no pain in themselves, but fire causes pain 
in them, and light transforms it into gentleness 
again. 

6. The right life is rooted in fire; there is the 
hinge of light and darkness. The hinge is desire; 
with whatever it fill itself, to the fire thereof the 
desire belongs, and its light shines from that fire. 
That light is the form or seeing of that life; and 
the substance introduced in the desire is the fire's 
wood, from which the fire burns, be it harsh or 
soft; and that also is its kingdom of heaven or 
of hell. 

7. Human fife is the hinge between light and 
darkness; to whichever it give itself up, in that 
same does it burn. If it give itself to the desire 
of essence, it burns in anguish, in the fire of 
darkness. 

8. But if it give itself to a nothing, then it is 
desireless, and falls unto the fire of light, and then 
it cannot burn in any pain; for it brings into its 
fire no substance from which a fire could burn. 
Seeing then there is no pain in it, neither can the 
life receive any pain, for there is none in it; it 
has fallen unto the first Magia, which is God in 
his triad. 

9. When the lif e is born, it has all the three worlds 
in it. The world to which it unites itself, by that 
it is held, and in that fire enkindled. 

10. For when the life enkindles itself, it is 
attracted by all the three worlds; and they are in 
motion in the essence, as in the first enkindled fire. 



THE SECOND POINT 133 

Whatever essence the life in its desire takes in and 
receives, its fire burns. 

11. If the first essence in which the life enkindles 
itself be good, then is also the fire pleasant and 
good. But if it be evil and dark, consisting of a 
fierce wrathful property, then is the fire also a 
wrath-fire, and has a corresponding desire conform- 
ing to the property of the fire. 

12. For every imagination desires only essence 
like unto itself, wherein it originally arose. 

13. The life of man in this time is like a wheel, 
where the undermost is soon uppermost. It en- 
kindles itself at every essence, and soils itself with 
every essence. But its bath is the movement of the 
heart of God, a water of gentleness ; and therefrom 
it is able to introduce substantiality into its fire-lif e. 
The election of God depends not on the first 
essence. 

14. For the first essence is only the mysterium 
for a life; and the first life with the enkindling 
belongs properly to its mysterium out of which it 
proceeded, be it wholly fierce essence, or a mixed 
essence, or an essence of light according to the 
light- world. 

15. The property from which the life first takes 
its rise, from that also burns the light of its life. 
This life has no election, and no judgment is passed 
upon it ; for it stands in its own primitive condition, 
and carries its judgment in itself. It separates 
itself from all other source (Qual) ; for it burns 
only in its own source, in its own magical fire. 

16. Election is in respect of that which is intro- 



134 SIX MYSTICAL POINTS 

duced, whether it belong to the light or to the 
darkness. For according as it belongs to the one 
property or to the other, so also is its life's will. 
And here it becomes known whether it is of the 
fierce wrathful essence, or of the love-essence. So 
long as it burns in one fire, it is forsaken of the 
other; and the election of that fire wherein it burns 
passes upon the life; for it would have it, it is of 
its property. 

17. But if that fire's will (as the flying punc- 
tual) plunge into another fire and enkindle itself 
therein, then it may enkindle the whole life with 
that fire, if it remain in that fire. 

18. Then is the life new-born, either unto the 
dark world or unto the world of light (in which- 
ever the will has enkindled itself), and upon it 
comes another election. And that is the reason why 
God suffers people to teach, and so does the devil. 
Each wishes the fife's will to plunge into his fire, 
and enkindle itself. And then one mysterium 
seizes the other. 



THE THIRD POINT 

On sin. What is sin, and how it is sin. 1 

1. A thing that is one has neither commandment 
nor law. But if it mix with another, then there 
are two beings in one, and also two wills, one 
running counter to the other. There is the origin 
of enmity. 

2. Thus we are to consider of enmity against 
God. God is one and good, without any pain or 
limiting characteristic (Qua!) ; and though all 
source or quality (Qual) be in him, yet it is not 
manifest. For the good has swallowed up the evil 
or contrary into itself, and keeps it in restraint in 
the good, as it were a prisoner; for the evil must 
be a cause of life and of light, but immanifest. 
But the good dies to the evil, that it may dwell in 
the evil, without pain or feeling, in itself. 

3. Love and enmity are only one thing; but each 
dwells in itself, and that makes two things. Death 
is the bound of separation between them; and yet 
there is no death, save that the good dies to the evil, 
as the light is dead to the pain of fire, and no 
longer feels the fire. 

4. Thus then must we explain sin in human life. 
For life is one and good; but if there be another 
quality therein, then it (life) is an enmity against 

i i.e. What things are sins, and what makes them sins, 
135 



136 SIX MYSTICAL POINTS 

God; for God dwells in the highest life of 
man. 

5. Now, no unfathomable existence can dwell in 
one that is fathomable. For, as soon as the right 
life awakens pain in itself, it is not identical with the 
unground, in which there is no pain; hence imme- 
diately one separates from the other. 

6. For the good or the light is as nothing; but 
if something come into it, then this something is 
another than the nothing. For the something 
dwells in itself in torment (Qua!) ; for where there 
is something, there must be a quality (Qual) which 
makes and keeps the something. 

7. And thus we are to consider of love and 
enmity. Love has but one quality and one will, it 
desires only its like, and not many. For the good 
is only one, but quality is many; and the human 
will that desires many, brings into itself, into the 
One (wherein God dwells) , the torment of plurality. 

8. For the something is dark, and darkens the 
life's light; and the One is Light, for it loves itself 
and is no desire after several. 

9. The life's will must therefore be directed 
towards the One (as towards the good), and thus 
it remains in one quality. But if it imaginate into 
another quality, it makes itself pregnant with the 
thing after which it longs. 

10. And if this thing be without an eternal foun- 
dation, in a frail perishable root, then it seeks a root 
for its preservation, that it may remain. For every 
life stands in magical fire ; and every fire must have 
substance in which it burns. 



THE THIRD POINT 137 

11. This same thing must make for itself sub- 
stance according to its desire, that its fire may 
have food to feed upon. Now, no fire-source can 
subsist in the free fire; for it attains not that, 
inasmuch as it is only a self -thing. 

12. All that is to subsist in God must be freed 
from its own will. It must have no individual 
fire burning in it; but God's fire must be its fire. 
Its will must be united to God, that God and the 
will and spirit of man may be but one. 

13. For that which is one is not at enmity with 
itself, for it has only one will. Wherever it goes, 
or whatever it does, that is all one with it. 

14. One will has only one imagination; and the 
imagination makes or desires only that which assim- 
ilates with it. And so in like manner we are to 
understand concerning the contrary will. 

15. God dwells in all things; and nothing com- 
prehends him, unless it be one with him. But if 
it go out from the One, it goes out of God into 
itself, and is another than God, which separates 
itself. And here it is that law arises, that it should 
proceed again out of itself into the One, or else 
remain separated from the One. 

16. And thus it may be known what is sin, or 
how it is sin. Namely, when the human will sep- 
arates itself from God into an existence of its own, 
and awakens its own self, and burns in its own fire, 
which is not capable of the divine fire. 

17. For all into which the will enters, and will 
have as its own, is something foreign in the one will 
of God. For all is God's, and to man's own will 



138 SIX MYSTICAL POINTS 

belongs nothing. But if it be in God, then all 
is its also. 

18. Thus we recognize that desire is sin. For it 
is a lusting out of one into many, and introduces 
many into one. It will possess, and yet should be 
will-less. By desire substance is sought, and in 
substance desire kindles fire. 

19. Now each particular fire burns in accordance 
with the character of its own being; and here sep- 
aration and enmity are born. For Christ says : He 
that is not with me is against me; and he that 
gathereth not with me scattereth (Luke xi. 23). 
For he gathereth without Christ ; and whatsoever is 
not in Him is out of God. 

20. We see, then, that covetousness is sin; for 
it is a desire out of God. And we see also that 
pride is sin, for it will be a thing of its own; and 
separates itself from God, as from the One. 

21. For whatever will be in God must walk in 
him, in his will. Seeing then we are in God but 
one in many members, it is against God when one 
member withdraws itself from the other, and makes 
a lord of itself, as pride does. Pride will be lord, 
and God alone is lord. Thus there are two lords, 
and one separates from the other. 

22. All, therefore, is sin and a contrary will, that 
desire possesses as its own, be it meat or drink. 
If the will imaginate thereinto, it fills itself there- 
with and kindles the fire thereof, and then another 
fire burns in the first, and there is contrary will 
and error. 

23. Therefore out of the contrary will must 



THE THIRD POINT 139 

grow a new will, which gives itself up again to the 
one Unity; and the contrary will must be broken 
and slain. 

24. And here we are to consider the Word of 
God that became man. If man place his desire 
therein, he goes out from pain (Qual) , from his 
own fire, and is new-born in the Word. And thus 
the out-going will dwells in God; and the first will 
in greed, earthliness and plurality. 

25. Accordingly plurality with the body must 
break, and it (plurality) must perish and fall away 
from the out-going will, and then the out-going 
will is recognized as a new birth. For in the One 
it takes all again into itself; but not with its own 
desire, but with * its own love — a love that is united 
with God, that God may be all in all, and his will 
the will of all things ; for in God exists but a single 
will. 

26. Thus we find that evil must be subservient 
unto the life of the good, provided the will again 
goes out from the evil, from itself, into the good; 
for fierceness must constitute life's fire. 

27. But the life's will must be turned against 
itself in conflict; for it must flee from fierceness, 
and not will it. It must not will desire, and yet its 
fire (i.e. life's fire) wills desire, and must have desire. 
Therefore the thing is, to be born anew in will. 

i Mr. H. H. Joachim writes : 'Bohme's point here is very deep : 
the individual's will when united with God does not lose its individu- 
ality. It takes all into itself with a love peculiar to itself — but since 
it is love, and not desire, it (the love) can be the will's very own, pe- 
culiar to it, and yet not separate it from other individuals or from 
God.' 



140 SIX MYSTICAL POINTS 

28. Every will-spirit that remains in the desire 
of its life's fire (as in the ferventness of the wood 
for fire), or enters thereinto and possesses the 
earthly, is separated from God as long as it possesses 
what is foreign, viz. the earthly. 

29. Thus, we recognize how superfluity of meat 
and drink produces sin. For the pure will, which 
goes out from life's fire, is drowned in desire and 
imprisoned, so that it proves too powerless in 
combat. For the source of fire (or of desire) 
holds it captive and fills it with craving, so that 
this same will carries its imagination into the 
desire. 

30. Accordingly the will in the desire for meat 
and drink is earthly, and is separated from God. 
But the will that escapes from the earthly fire, burns 
in the inward fire, and is divine. 

31. This will that flees from the earthly desire 
arises not from the earthly fire. No; it is the will 
of the soul's fire, which is caught and concealed by 
the earthly desire. It wills not to remain in the 
earthly desire, but will enter into its One, into God, 
out of which it originally sprang. 

32. But if it be kept a prisoner in the earthly 
desire, then it is shut up in death, and suffers agony. 
And thus is sin to be understood. 



THE FOURTH POINT 

HOW CHRIST WILL DELIVER UP THE KINGDOM 
TO HIS FATHER. 

1. At the creation of the world and of all being, 
the Father put himself in motion in accordance 
with his property, viz. by the centre of Nature, 
by the dark world and the fire-world. These 
continued in motion and domination till the Father 
moved himself in accordance with his heart (and 
the light-world), and God became man. Then 
the love of the light overcame the Father's fierce 
wrathful property, and the Father ruled in the Son 
with love. 

2. Then the Son had dominion in those that did 
cleave unto God; and the Holy Spirit (that pro- 
ceeds from the Father and Son) drew men in the 
light of love, through the Son, to God the Father. 

3. But in the end the Holy Spirit moves in the 
Father's and also in the Son's property, and both 
properties become active at once. The spirit of 
the Father reveals itself in fire and light, as also 
in the wrath of the dark world. Then the king- 
dom falls unto the Father. For the Holy Spirit 
must govern eternally, and be an eternal revealer 
in the light-world and also in the dark world. 

4. For the two worlds will stand still; and the 
Holy Spirit who proceeds from the Father and 

141 



142 SIX MYSTICAL POINTS 

Son, bears rule eternally in the two worlds, accord- 
ing to each world's nature and property. 

5. He alone will be the revealer of -the wonders. 
And thus to the Father (who is all) the eternal 
dominion, which he exercises with the Spirit, is 
delivered by the Son. 



THE FIFTH POINT 

On magic. What magic is. What the 
magical ground is. 

1. Magic is the mother of eternity, of the being 
of all beings; for it creates itself, and is under- 
stood in desire. 

2. It is in itself nothing but a will, and this will 
is the great mystery of all wonders and secrets, but 
brings itself by the imagination of the desireful 
hunger into being. 

3. It is the original state of Nature. Its desire 
makes an imagination (Einbildung) , and imagina- 
tion or figuration is only the will of desire. But 
desire makes in the will such a being as the will in 
itself is. 

4. True Magic is not a being, but the desiring 
spirit of the being. It is a matrix without sub- 
stance, but manifests itself in the substantial being. 

5. Magic is spirit, and being is its body; and yet 
the two are but one, as body and soul is but one 
person. 

6. Magic is the greatest secrecy, for it is above 
Nature, and makes Nature after the form of its 
will. It is the mystery of the Ternary, viz. it is 
in desire the will striving towards the heart of God. 

7. It is the formative power in the eternal wis- 
dom, as a desire in the Ternary, in which the eternal 



144 SIX MYSTICAL POINTS 

wonder of the Ternary desires to manifest itself in 
co-operation with Nature. It is the desire which 
introduces itself into the dark Nature, and through 
Nature into fire, and through fire, through death or 
fierceness into the light of Majesty. 

8. It is not Majesty, but the desire in Majesty. 
It is the desire of the divine power, not the power 
itself, but the hunger or craving in the power. It is 
not God's Almightiness, but the directrix in God's 
power and might. The heart of God is the power, 
and the Holy Spirit is the revelation of power. 

9. It is, however, the desire not only in the power, 
but also in the conducting spirit ; for it has in it the 
Fiat. What the Will-spirit reveals in it, that it 
brings into a being by the sourness which is the 
Fiat; all according to the model of the will. Ac- 
cording as the will makes a model in wisdom, so 
does desiring Magic receive it; for it has in its 
property imagination as a longing. 

10. Imagination is gentle and soft, and resembles 
water. But Desire is harsh and dry, like a hunger; 
it makes the soft hard, and is found in all things, 
for it is the greatest thing (Wesen) in the Deity. 
It leads the bottomless to foundation, and the noth- 
ing into something. 

11. In Magic are all forms of Being of all beings. 
It is a mother in all three worlds, and makes each 
thing after the model of that thing's will. It is 
not the understanding, but it is a creatrix accord- 
ing to the understanding, and lends itself to good 
or to evil. 

12. All that the will models in wisdom, if the 



THE FIFTH POINT 145 

will of the understanding also enter thereinto, that 
does Magic make into a being. It serves those 
that love God in God's Being; for it makes in the 
understanding divine substance, and takes this 
from imagination, as from the gentleness of the 
light. 

13. It is Magic that makes divine flesh; and the 
understanding is born of wisdom, for it is a dis- 
scerner of colours, powers and virtues. The under- 
standing guides the right true spirit with a bridle; 
for the spirit is soaring, and the understanding is its 
fire. 

14. The spirit is not dissentient, that it should dis- 
sent from the understanding; but it is the will of 
the understanding. But the senses in the under- 
standing are flying-out and dissentient. 

15. For the senses are the flash from the fire- 
spirit, and bring with them in the light the flames of 
Majesty; and in the darkness they bring with them 
the flash of terror, as a fierce flash of fire. 

16. The senses are such a subtle spirit that they 
enter into all beings, and take up all beings into 
themselves. But the understanding tries all in its 
own fire; it rejects the evil and retains the good. 
Then Magic, its mother, takes this and brings it 
into a being. 

17. Magic is the mother from which Nature 
comes, and the understanding is the mother coming 
from Nature. Magic leads into a fierce fire, and 
the understanding leads its own mother, Magic, 
out of the fierce fire into its own fire. 

18. For the understanding is the fire of power, 



146 SIX MYSTICAL POINTS 

and Magic the burning fire ; and yet it is not to be 
understood as fire, but the power or mother to fire. 
Fire is called the principle, and Magic is called 
desire. 

19. By Magic is everything accomplished, both 
good and bad. Its own working is Nigromantia, 
but it is distributed into all the properties. In that 
which is good it is good, and in that which is evil it 
is evil. It is of use to the children for God's king- 
dom, and to the sorcerers for the devil's kingdom; 
for the understanding can make of it what it 
pleases. It is without understanding, and yet com- 
prehends all; for it is the comprehension of all 
things. 

20. It is impossible to express its depth, for it is 
from eternity a ground and support of all things. 
It is a master of philosophy, and likewise a mother 
thereof. 

21. But philosophy leads Magic, its mother, as 
it pleases. As the divine power, viz. the Word (or 
heart of God), leads the severe Father into gentle- 
ness; so also does philosophy (or the understand- 
ing) lead its mother into a gentle divine quality. 

22. Magic is the book of all scholars. All that 
will leam must first learn Magic, be it a high or a 
lowly art. Even the peasant in the field must go 
to the magical school, if he would cultivate his field. 

23. Magic is the best theology, for in it true faith 
is both grounded and found. And he is a fool that 
reviles it; for he knows it not, and blasphemes 
against God and himself, and is more a juggler than 
a theologian of understanding. 



THE FIFTH POINT 147 

24. As one that fights before a mirror, and knows 
not what the quarrel is, for his fighting is superfi- 
cial; so also the unjust theologian looks on Magic 
through a reflection, and understands nothing of 
the power. For it is godlike, and he is ungodlike, 
yea, devilish, according to the property of each 
principle. In sum: Magic is the activity in the 
Will-spirit. 



THE SIXTH POINT 

On mystery. What it is. 

1. Mystery is nothing else than the magical will, 
which still lies caught in desire. It may fashion 
itself in the mirror of wisdom how it will. And as 
it fashions itself in the tincture, so it is fixed and 
formed in Magic, and brought into a being. 

2. For Mysterium magnum is nothing else than 
the hiddenness of the Deity, together with the Be- 
ing of all beings, from which one mysterium pro- 
ceeds after another, and each mysterium is the mir- 
ror and model of the other. And it is the great 
wonder of eternity, wherein all is included, and from 
eternity has been seen in the mirror of wisdom. 
And nothing comes to pass that has not from eter- 
nity been known in the mirror of wisdom. 

3. But you must understand this according to 
the properties of the mirror, according to all the 
forms of Nature, viz. according to light and dark- 
ness, according to comprehensibility and incompre- 
hensibility, according to love and wrath, or accord- 
ing to fire and light, as has been set forth elsewhere. 

4. The Magician has power in this Mystery to 
act according to his will, and can do what he pleases. 

5. But he must be armed in that element wherein 
he would create; else he will be cast out as a 
stranger, and given into the power of the spirits, 

148 



THE SIXTH POINT 149 

thereof, to deal with him according to their desire. 
Of which in this place no more is to be said, because 
of the turba. 



MYSTERIUM PANSOPHICUM 

OR 

A FUNDAMENTAL STATEMENT 

CONCERNING THE 

EARTHLY AND HEAVENLY 
MYSTERY 

HOW THEY ARE IN ONE ANOTHER, AND HOW IN 
THE EARTHLY THE HEAVENLY IS MANIFESTED 

DRAWN UP IN NINE TEXTS 

WHERE BABEL, THE GREAT CITY ON EARTH, IS 

TO BE SEEN WITH ITS POWER AND MARVELS. WHY 

BABEL IS BORN, AND EROM WHAT. WHERE 

ANTICHRIST SHALL STAND NAKED 

A most wonderful revelation, taken out of the 
highest arcanum. Herein is wholly revealed what 

the turba of all beings is. 
Written for the children of God, who by such 
warning will flee from burning Babel, and shall 

be born children of God out of the turba. 
All very earnestly and faithfully given from know- 
ledge of the great Mystery, the 8th May, 16'20 

BY 

JACOB BOHME 



) 



THE FIRST TEXT 

The unground is an eternal nothing, but makes an 
eternal beginning as a craving. For the nothing is 
a craving after something. But as there is nothing 
that can give anything, accordingly the craving it- 
self is the giving of it, which yet also is a nothing, or 
merely a desirous seeking. And that is the eternal 
origin of Magic, which makes within itself where 
there is nothing; which makes something out of 
nothing, and that in itself only, though this craving 
is also a nothing, that is, merely a will. It has noth- 
ing, and there is nothing that can give it anything ; 
neither has it any place where it can find or repose 
itself. 



153 



THE SECOND TEXT 

1. Seeing then there is a craving in the nothing, 
it makes in itself the will to something. This will 
is a spirit, as a thought, which goes out of the crav- 
ing and is the seeker of the craving, for it finds its 
mother or the craving. Then is this will a Magician 
in its mother; for it has found in the nothing some- 
thing, viz. its mother, and so now it has a place for 
its dwelling. 

2. And herein understand that the will is a spirit, 
and different from the desirous craving. For the 
will is an insensitive and incognitive life; but the 
craving is found by the will, and is in the will a 
being. Thus the craving is a Magia, and the will a 
Magus; and the will is greater than its mother which 
gives it, for it is lord in the mother; and the mother 
is dumb, but the will is a life without origin. The 
craving is certainly a cause of the will, but without 
knowledge or understanding. The will is the un- 
derstanding of the craving. 

3. Thus we give you in brief to consider of nature 
and the spirit of nature, what there has been from 
eternity without origin. And we find thus that the 
will, viz. the spirit, has no place for its rest ; but the 
craving is its own place, and the will is a band to it, 
and yet is not held in check. 



154 



THE THIRD TEXT 

1. Seeing then the eternal will is free from the 
craving, but the craving is not free from the will 
for the will rules over the craving), we recognize 
the will as the eternal Omnipotence. For it has no 
parallel. The craving is indeed a movement of 
attraction or desire, but without understanding; it 
has a lif e, but without knowledge. 

2. Now the will governs the life of the craving, 
and doth therewith what it will. And though it 
doth somewhat, yet this is not known till the same 
reveals itself through the will, so that it becomes an 
entity in the life of the will ; then it is known what 
the will has wrought. 

3. We recognize, therefore, the eternal Will- 
spirit as God, and the moving life of the craving as 
Nature. For there is nothing prior, and either is 
without beginning, and each is a cause of the other, 
and an eternal bond. 

4. Thus the Will-spirit is an eternal knowing of 
the unground, and the life of the craving an eternal 
being [body] of the will. 



155 



THE FOURTH TEXT 

1. Seeing then the craving is a process of desire, 
and this desire a life, this same desiring life goes in 
the craving forward, and is always pregnant with 
the craving. 

2. And the desire is a stern attraction, and yet 
hath nothing but itself, or the eternity without foun- 
dation. And it draws magically, viz. its own desir- 
ing into a substance. 

3. For the will takes where there is nothing. It 
is a lord and possessor. It is itself not a being, and 
yet rules in being, and being makes it desirous, 
namely of being. And since it becomes in itself 
desirous, it is magical, and makes itself pregnant, 
viz. by spirit without being ; for originally it is only 
spirit. Thus it makes in its imagination only spirit, 
and becomes pregnant with spirit as with the eter- 
nal knowing of the unground, in the All-power of 
the life, without being. 

4. As then it is pregnant, the engenderment goes 
within itself, and dwells in itself. For the essence 
of the other life cannot grasp this pregnation, and 
be its container. Hence the pregnation must go 
within itself and be its own container, as a Son in 
the eternal Spirit. 

5. And as this pregnation has no being, then that 
is a voice or sound, as a Word of the spirit ; and yet 

156 



THE FOURTH TEXT 157 

remains in the primitive condition of spirit, for it 
hath else no seat. 

6. But in this Word is a will, which desires to 
go out into a being. This will is the life of the 
original will, and proceeds out of the pregnation, 
as out of the mouth of the will, into the life of Magic, 
viz. into Nature ; and reveals the non-understanding 
life of Magic, so that the same is a mysterium in 
which an understanding exists essentially, and thus 
obtains an essential spirit. There, every essence is 
an arcanum or a mysterium of an entire being, and 
is thus a comprehension as an unfathomable won- 
der of eternity ; for many lives without number are 
generated, and yet all is together but one being. 

7. The threefold Spirit without being is its mas- 
ter and possessor; and yet it possesses not the Na- 
ture-being, for it (the Spirit) dwells in itself. 

8. The Word is its centre or seat, and is in the 
midst as a heart ; and the spirit of the Word, which 
takes its origin in the primal eternal will, reveals 
the wonders of the essential life. There are, then, 
two mysteries : one in the spirit-life, and one in the 
essential life. The spirit-life is acknowledged as 
God, and is rightly so called; and the essential life 
is acknowledged as the Nature-life, which would 
have no understanding if the Spirit or the spirit-life 
were not desirous. In this desire the divine Being, 
as the eternal word or heart of God, is continually 
and from eternity generated ; from which the desir- 
ing will as Spirit eternally goes out into the Nature- 
life, and reveals therein the mystery in essences. 
So that there are two lives and also two beings, 



158 ON HEAVENLY MYSTERY 

from and in a single, eternal, unfathomable origin. 
9. And thus we apprehend what God and Nature 
is ; how the one and the other is from eternity with- 
out any ground or beginning. For it is an ever- 
lasting beginning. It begins itself perpetually and 
from eternity to eternity, where there is no number ; 
for it is the unground. 



THE FIFTH TEXT 

1. Seeing then there have been from eternity two 
beings, we cannot say that one exists beside the 
other, and is disposed so that the one comprehends 
the other; neither can it be said that one is outside 
of the other, and that there is a separation. No; 
but thus we apprehend it, that the spirit-life faces 
inwards, and the nature-life outwards and forwards. 

2. Together, then, we compare them to a spheri- 
cal orb which goeth on all sides, as the wheel in 
Ezekiel indicates. 

3. The spirit-life is an entire fulness of the na- 
ture-life, and yet is not laid hold of by the nature- 
life. They are two principles in a single origin, 
each having its mystery and its operation. The na- 
ture-life works unto fire, and the spirit-life unto the 
light of glory. By fire we understand the fierce- 
ness of the consuming of the essentiality of Nature ; 
and by light the production of water, which deprives 
the fire of power, as is set forth in the Forty Ques- 
tions on the soul. 

4. And thus we are able to recognize an eternal 
substantiality of Nature, identical with water and 
fire, which are as it were mixed together ; where then 
this gives a light-blue colour, like the flash of fire; 
where it hath a form as a ruby mixed with crystal 
in one substance, or as yellow, white, red and blue 

159 



160 ON HEAVENLY MYSTERY 

mingled in a dark water; where it is as blue in 
green, yet each has its lustre, and shines. And the 
water checks the iire, so that there is no consuming 
there, but an eternal essence or substance in two 
mysteries united in one another, and yet the dis- 
tinction of two principles as two kinds of life. 

5. And thus we understand here the essence of 
all beings, and that it is a magical essence, as a will 
can create itself in the essential life, and so enter 
into a birth, and in the great Mystery, in the origin 
of fire, awaken a source which before was not mani- 
fest, but lay hidden in mystery like a gleam in the 
multiplicity of colours ; as we have a mirror of this 
in the devils and in all malignity. And we recog- 
nize also from whence all things, evil and good, take 
their origin, namely from the Imagination in the 
great Mystery, where a wonderful essential life 
generates itself. 

6. As we have a sufficient knowledge thereof by 
the creatures of this world, as where the divine Life 
awakened once for all the Nature-life, when it 
brought forth such wonderful creatures from the 
essential mystery; whereby we understand that 
every essence is come to be a mysterium or a life, 
and also that in the great Mystery there is a magical 
craving, so that the craving of every essence makes 
in its turn a mirror, to see and to know itself in the 
mirror. 

7. And then the craving seizes this (namely the 
mirror), brings it into its imagination, and finds 
that it is not of its life. Hence opposition arises 
and loathing, so that the craving would discard the 



THE FIFTH TEXT 161 

mirror, and yet cannot. And therefore the craving 
seeks the limit of the beginning, and passes out of 
the mirror. Thus the mirror is broken, and the 
breaking is a turba, as a dying of the formed or 
comprehended life. 

8. And it is highly recognizable by us how the 
imagination of the Eternal Nature has the turba 
in the craving, in the Mystery, but not awakenable, 
unless the creature, as the mirror of eternity, doth 
itself awaken this, viz. the fierce wrath, which in 
eternity is hidden in mystery. 

9. And we see here, when the Eternal Nature 
put itself in motion once for all by the creation of 
the world, that the fierce wrath was awakened too, 
and also manifested itself in creatures. As indeed 
we find many evil beasts, likewise herbs and trees, 
as also worms, toads, serpents and the like, — of 
which the Eternal Nature hath a loathing, and the 
malignity and poison is nourished only in its own 
essence. 

10. And therefore the Eternal Nature seeks the 
limit of the malignity, and would abandon it. Then 
it falls into the turba, as into a dying ; and yet there 
is no dying, but a spewing-out in the Mystery, where 
the malignity with its life must stand apart as in a 
darkness. For the Eternal Nature abandons it and 
casts it into shade, so that it stands thus by itself as 
an evil, poisonous, fierce mysterium, and is itself its 
own magic as a craving of the poisonful anguish. 



THE SIXTH TEXT 

1. When we consider and take cognizance of our- 
selves, we find the opposition of all essences, each 
being the loathing of the other, and enemy to the 
other. 

2. For every will desires a purity without turba 
in the other essence ; and yet has itself the turba in 
it, and is also the loathing of the other. Then the 
power of the greater extends over the lesser and 
holds it in subjection, unless it escape from it; other- 
wise the strong rules over the weak. Therefore 
the weak doth run, and seeks the limit of the driver 
or oppressor, and would be free from compulsion. 
And thus the limit, which is hidden in mystery, is 
sought by all creatures. 

3. And hence arises all the power of this world, 
that one rules over the other. And this was not in 
the beginning commanded or ordained by the high- 
est good, but grew out of the turba. Afterward 
Nature acknowledged it as her own being, which 
was born from her, and gave it laws, to generate it- 
self further in the framed government. Where 
then this birth has climbed to regal prerogative, and 
has moreover sought the abyss, as the One, till it is 
become monarchy or empire. And there it is 
climbing still, and will be one and not many. And 
though it be in many, yet will the first source, from 
which all is generated, rule over all, and will alone 
be a lord over all governments. 

162 



THE SIXTH TEXT 163 

4. And as this craving was in the beginning one 
government, but in time divided itself into many ac- 
cording to the essences ; therefore the plurality again 
seeks the One, and it is certainly born in the sixth 
number of the crown, in the six thousandth year in 
the figure ; not at the end, but in the hour of the day 
in which the creation of the wonders was completed. 

5. That is, when the wonders of the turba are in 
the end, a Lord is born who governs the whole 
world, but by many forms of administration. 

6. And then the self -grown authority and the 
oppressor will be sought; for the lesser, who hath 
lain under, has run to the limit. Then everything 
separates itself, for it is at the limit, and there is no 
staying or revoking. 

7. Also the turba, as the fierce wrath of all crea- 
tures, will be sought ; for it has with the loathing of 
the creatures run to the limit, and now becomes man- 
ifest, viz. in the midst, in the number of the crown, 
in the six thousandth year, a little over, not under. 

8. In the day and the hour when the creation was 
accomplished in mystery, and was set as a mirror of 
eternity in the wonders [of this time] .* 

9. That took place on the sixth day, past noon. 
There [also in the end] the mysteiy with the won- 
ders is revealed and is known. Where then purity 
shall drive out the turba for a time, till the begin- 
ning pass into the end. And then is the mystery 
[of creation but] a wonder in figures. 

i The explanatory additions within brackets [ ] are from Claassen's 
book of extracts. 



THE SEVENTH TEXT 

1. Now, seeing in the mystery of the Eternal 
Nature we have such an arcanum from which all 
creatures evil and good were generated and cre- 
ated, we recognize it to be a magical essence or sub- 
stance, where one Magic has by desire awakened 
another and brought it into being, where everything 
has elevated itself and carried itself to the highest 
power. For the Spirit of God is not a maker in 
Nature, but a revealer and a seeker of the good. 

2. Thus hath evil as by magical craving always 
sought and found itself in the Mystery, and has 
been revealed apart from the divine purpose. For 
fierceness is a harsh rigorousness, and rules over the 
simple. 

3. All has, therefore, grown from its own tree 
without premeditation. For the first revealer, viz. 
God, ordained not malignity to the government, but 
reason or wit, which was to reveal the wonders and 
be a guide of life. And here there meets us the 
great secret which has from eternity existed in mys- 
tery, viz. the Mystery with its colours, which are 
four. The fifth is not proper to the mysterium of 
Nature, but is of the Mysterium of God, and shines 
in the mysterium of Nature as a living light. 

4. And these are the colours wherein all things 
lie: blue, red, green and yellow. The fifth, white, 
belongs to God; and yet has also its lustre in Na- 

164 . 



THE SEVENTH TEXT 165 

ture. It is the fifth essence, a pure unblemished 
child; as is to be seen in gold and silver, and in a 
white clear stone that resists fire. 

5. For fire is the proof or trial of all the colours, 
in which none subsists but white, the same being a 
reflection of God's Majesty. The black colour be- 
longs not to the mystery [of the wonders of crea- 
tion], but is the veil or the darkness wherein all 
things lie. 

6. Further, we find here the tree of tongues or 
languages, with four alphabets. One signed with 
the characters of the Mystery, in which is found the 
language of Nature, which in all languages is the 
root. But in the birth of plurality (or of many 
languages) it is not known save by its own children, 
to whom the Mystery itself gives understanding; 
for it is a wonder of God. This alphabet of the 
language of Nature is hidden among them all in 
the black colour ; for the black colour belongs not to 
the number of colours. The same is mystery and 
not understood, save by him who possesses the lan- 
guage of Nature, to whom it is revealed by God's 
Spirit. I .j 

7. The second alphabet is the Hebrew, which 
reveals the mystery [of the language of Nature], 
and names the tree with the branches and twigs. 

8. The third is the Greek, which names the tree 
with the fruit and every ornament, and first cor- 
rectly expresses knowledge. 

9. The fourth is the Latin (to which many na- 
tions and tongues have recourse, which expresses 
the tree with its power and virtue. 



166 ON HEAVENLY MYSTERY 

10. The fifth is God's Spirit, which is the re- 
vealer of all alphabets; and this alphabet can no 
man learn, unless it reveal itself in man's spirit. 

11. These alphabets take their origin from the 
colours of the great Mystery, and distribute them- 
selves moreover into seventy-seven languages; al- 
though we recognize only five for chief languages, 
and seventy-two for the marvels wherein Babel is 
understood, as a mouth of a confusedness. There 
reason abandoned her guide and willed to go alone, 
and to climb aloft into the Mystery. 

12. As is to be known by the children of Nimrod 
at the tower of Babel, when they had fallen from 
obedience to God into their own individual reason; 
then they had lost their guide and did confound 
reason, so that they comprehended not their own 
language. 

13. Thus many languages, viz. seventy-two, grew 
out of confused Babel, and each entered into itself 
and sought knowledge, each in its own reason and 
iniquity; for they had forsaken God and were be- 
come heathens. And he suffered them to walk in 
their wonders, for they would not cleave unto him, 
but would be a special self-ful growth. And their 
own reason (which was mixed of all the colours) 
had to rule them. 

14. Then the turba was born, so that they were 
not of one mind; for every one would live under 
guidance of his own colour. And yet these were 
not the true chief colours, but only their evil self- 
hatched children, who hatched themselves out in 
reason. And they ran without the right guide, who 



THE SEVENTH TEXT 167 

had created all in one tongue, and revealed no more 
than one, — one tree with the branches and the power 
together with the fruit. 

15. For the four alphabets are in one tree, and 
proceed from one another. But the multitude of 
languages must have recourse to their characters 
as members of the same family, and yet also will be 
their very own. And all shoot forth in opposition 
to the tree. 



THE EIGHTH TEXT 

1. We see here the origin of two sorts of religions, 
from which Babel as an idol-god is born, and that 
in heathens and Jews. 

2. For Babel is in both, and they are two races 
in one. One, under guidance of its reason (as of 
the life and spirit of Nature), goes forward and 
seeks to elevate itself. It makes itself a way in its 
being; for its will proceeds out of its own craving 
and seeks its magic, as a great number for its gov- 
ernment, and goes simply out of itself forward. 
Its will remains in its plurality, and is the god and 
guide of its plurality. 

3. And though the Free-will of God oppose it 
and reprove it, yet the idol-god only flatters with 
its lips the Free-will, viz. the Spirit of God, and 
honours its own will in the number of plurality. 
For this will is generated from its treasure, from its 
own magic, and comprehends not the Free-will of 
God. It is born therefore from flesh and blood, 
from its own nature ; and is a child of this world, and 
regards its treasure as its love. Hence it is a hypo- 
crite and a confused Babel. The number of plural- 
ity and its own magic confuse it, in that it goes out 
from one number into many. This multiplicity is 
a confused Babel; and its hypocritical mouth, with 
which it gives good words and solemnly promises 
much to the Spirit of Unity, is an antichrist and a 

168 



THE EIGHTH TEXT 169 

liar. For it speaks in one way and acts in another. 
Its heart is a craving, and the spirit of its heart has 
turned itself to the craving. 

4. Thus the Magician of multiplicity is a proud, 
arrogant, covetous, malignant devourer, and a spirit 
from the desiring plurality; and is a false god. He 
is not attached to the Free-will of Nature, which 
hath the might of wonders at its command, and he 
has no understanding in the Divine Mystery, for he 
cleaves not with his will to that Spirit. Else, if 
his will were turned towards Freedom, the Spirit of 
God would reveal his magical mystery, and his won- 
ders and works would, with his will, stand in God. 

5. But seeing they go out from themselves, the 
beginning seeks the end, and the middle is the turba. 
For it is not in the Free-will of God; but it grows 
from itself, and elevates itself like a proud tree. 

6. And as God is one only in will, one in the 
eternal Desire or in the eternal Magic ( so that the 
craving of the eternal Magic yields itself up to the 
eternal Will, and draws therein its life), then the 
apostate will is a perjured whore, for it is a gener- 
atress of falsehood, and hangs not on the Free-will. 

7. And here we understand a separation from 
God; a cause of all this being Lucifer, who made 
the Magic of Nature subject to false desire. Thus 
two eternal lives are born: one in the will of God, 
the other in the will of the devil and of the fierce 
wrath; and this is Babel with Antichrist on earth. 

8. All that goes out from God's will into its own 
will belongs to Babel. This is seen in Jews and 
heathens, and in all peoples. 



170 ON HEAVENLY MYSTERY 

9. The heathen remained in their own magic. 
But those who from the itch of corruption passed 
out into the light of Nature because they did not 
know God, yet have lived in purity, — these were 
children of the Free-will, and in them has the Spirit 
of Freedom revealed great wonders in their mys- 
tery, as is to be seen by the wisdom they have be- 
queathed to us. 

10. But the others, who have lived only in their 
own magical will from flesh and blood, — their will 
was drowned in the turba. And the turba streamed 
forth in their will, and gave them a spirit according 
to the essences of covetousness and fierceness. 
These have sought only the number of plurality, as 
dominions and kingdoms. 

11. And when the turba could not on account of 
power advance, it grew furious and began hostili- 
ties. And from thence war has its origin, viz. from 
pride and greed of plurality, and belongs with its 
number to the Mystery of wrath. 

12. Thus also were the Jews. God revealed 
himself to them, but they were attached also to two 
wills. One part to the commandment, with their 
will directed into God's will, as the patriarchs and 
all the pious hopers of Israel. The others per- 
formed with their hands the work of the law, and 
adhered with their will to their poisoned magic, viz. 
to covetousness, and sought only their numbers of 
plurality. Their mouth was a Jew, and their heart 
a Babylonish whore, a hypocrite and an antichrist, 
with fair words and a false covetous heart. 

13. And in the same way in Christendom and 



THE EIGHTH TEXT 171 

among all peoples the Babylonish whore with Anti- 
christ is established. In one people dwell at once 
two kingdoms, and are not miscible in the inward 
spirit so as to become one, like as clay and iron are 
not miscible. They mix indeed by the body, but 
their spirits are two kinds (Dan. ii. 43). 

14. Whosoever will know Antichrist, let him seek 
him thus ; he will find him in every house. But the 
worst of all is the crowned whore; and her sponsors 
at the baptism of whoredom are the brawlers who 
lead out of the one will of God into many wills, that 
they may inherit only the number of plurality, and 
fatten earthly bellies. 

15. And the other part of the Free-will of God 
proceeds with its magical will out of itself into 
Freedom, viz. into the one ungraspable will of God. 
These stand turned backward in the magical figure. 
Their life seeks bread, and goes forward; yet their 
will is not in the bread, but passes out of itself, out 
of the craving, into God. These live with the will 
in God, in one number; these are children of the 
eternal true Magic. For God's Spirit dwells in 
their will, and reveals to them the eternal wonders 
of God; and their life's spirit reveals the wonders 
of this world. 

16. These are free from Babel and Antichrist, 
even though they should sit in his lap. For the 
true image of God is in the spirit of the will, which 
is generated from the soul's spirit. 



THE NINTH TEXT 

1. Seeing then there are two Magics in one an- 
other, there are also two Magicians who lead them, 
viz. two spirits. One is God's Spirit, and the other 
the Reason-spirit, in which the devil ensconces him- 
self. In God's Spirit is the love of unity. And 
man cannot better prove or try himself than by 
giving serious attention to what his desire and long- 
ing impel him: the same he hath for a leader, and 
its child he is. Nevertheless, he now has power to 
break and change that will; for he is magical and 
possesses the power. 

2. But there must be real earnestness; for he 
must subdue the astral spirit which rules in him. 
To do this, a sober calm life is necessary, with con- 
tinual abandonment to God's will. For, to subdue 
the astral influence, no wisdom nor art will avail; 
but sobriety of life, with continual withdrawal from 
the influxes. The elements continually introduce 
the astral craving into his will. Therefore it is not 
so easy a thing to become a child of God ; it requires 
great labour, with much travail and suffering. 

3. Antichrist indeed may call himself a child of 
God. But Christ says: They shall not all enter 
into the kingdom of heaven who say : Lord, Lord, 
have we not in thy name cast out devils and done 
mighty works? But he saith unto them: Away 

172 



THE NINTH TEXT 173 

from me, ye stinking goats, I know you not (Matt. 
vii. 21-23). Ye have done this by means of false 
magic, and have never become known in my spirit 
and will. Ye are in your spiritual figure goats, 
tyrants, covetous muckworms, proud arrogants, vo- 
luptuaries. Ye have carried my name on your 
tongue, but sacrificed your heart to pleasure, to the 
itch of the flesh, and are generated in the turba. 
Ye must be proved by fire. And thus to every 
kingdom its fruit comes home. 

4. Therefore, thou brave world, look at thyself 
in these writings, which the eternal Ground hath 
set before thee, and meditate on it further and more 
deeply. Else thou wilt be caught in thy turba. 
There thou shalt with thy substance pass through 
the fire of God; and whatsoever is a work out of 
God's will shall remain in the fire. 

5. But whatsoever is done in the will of God 
shall stand to the honour and glory of God, and for 
the eternal joy of the image of man. 

6. Now think what thou doest. For Babel is 
already in flames, and begins to burn. There is no 
longer possible any quenching, nor any remedy. 
She has been recognized as evil ; her kingdom goeth 
to the end. Hallelujah. 



THEOSCOPIA 

OR 
THE HIGHLY PRECIOUS GATE OF THE 

DIVINE INTUITION 



SHOWING WHAT MYSTEBIUM MAGNUM IS, AND 

HOW ALL IS FROM, THROUGH AND IN GOD; 

HOW GOD IS SO NEAR ALL THINGS, 

AND FILLS ALL 



Written in the year 1623 
BY 

JACOB BOHME 



CHAPTER I 

What God is; and how we shall recognize his divine 
nature in his manifestation. 

1. Reason says: I hear much mention made of 
God, that there is a God who has created all things, 
also upholds and supports all things; but I have 
not yet seen any, nor heard from the lips of any, 
that hath seen God, or that could tell where God 
dwells or is, or how he is. For when Reason looks 
upon the existence of this world, and considers that 
it fares with the righteous as with the wicked, and 
how all things are mortal and frail; also how the 
righteous man sees no deliverer to release him from 
the anxiety and adversity of the wicked man, and 
so must go down with fear in misery to the grave : 
then it thinks, all things happen by chance ; there is 
no God who interests himself in the sufferer, seeing 
he lets him that hopes in him be in misery, and there- 
in go down to the grave ; neither has any been heard 
of who has returned from corruption, and said he 
has been with God. 

2. Answer. Reason is a natural life, whose 
ground lies in a temporal beginning and end, and 
cannot enter into the supernatural ground wherein 
God is understood. For though Reason thus views 
itself in this world, and in its viewing finds no other 
ground, yet it finds in itself a desire after a higher 
ground, wherein it might rest. 

177 



178 ON THE DIVINE INTUITION 

3. For it understands that it has proceeded from 
a supernatural ground, and that there must be a 
God who has brought it into a lif e and will. And it 
is terrified in itself at its willing of wickedness, it is 
ashamed of its own will, and pronounces itself 
wrong in the willing of evil. Even though it does 
wrong, yet it accuses itself, and is afraid of a judg- 
ment which it sees not. This signifies that the hid- 
den God, who has brought himself into Nature, 
dwells in it and reproves it for its evil way ; and that 
the same hidden God cannot be of the nature of 
perceptibility, since Reason sees not nor compre- 
hends him. 

4. On the other hand, forsaken Reason, which 
here wrongfully (to its thinking) is tormented in 
misery, finds a desire within it, itself still more to 
forsake, and willingly gives itself up to suffering. 
But in its suffering wrong it enters into a hope that 
that which has created it will take it from suffering 
into itself ; and it desires to rest in that which is not 
passive, and seeks rest in that which it is not in it- 
self. It desires the death of its egoism, and yet de- 
sires not to be a nothing; but desires only to die to 
suffering (Qual) , in order that it may rest in itself. 

5. It gives itself up therefore to suffering, that 
the power of pain should kill its suffering, and that 
it might in its life, through the death of the dying 
of its Self, in that it is a painful life, enter into the 
unpainful and unsuffering. 

6. Herein we understand rightly the hidden God, 
how he reveals himself in the heart of man, and re- 
proves wrong in the conscience, and draws that 



ON THE DIVINE INTUITION 179 

which suffers wrong by suffering to himself. And 
how the life of Reason, viz. the natural life, must 
in suffering get a desire to return again into that 
out of which it proceeded; and how it must desire 
to hate itself, and to die to the natural will, in order 
that it may attain the supernatural. 

7. Reason says : Why has God created a painful, 
suffering life? Might it not be in a better state 
without suffering or pain, seeing he is the ground 
and beginning of all things? Why does he permit 
the contrary will? Why does he not destroy evil, 
that only a good may be in all things? 

8. Answer. Nothing without contrariety can 
become manifest to itself; for if it has nothing to 
resist it, it goes continually of itself outwards, and 
returns not again into itself. But if it return not 
again into itself, as into that out of which it origi- 
nally went, it knows nothing of its primal being. 1 

9. If the natural life had no contrariety, and were 
without a limit, it would never inquire after its 
ground from which it arose; and hence the hidden 
God would remain unknown to the natural life. 
Moreover, were there no contrariety in life, there 
would be no sensibility, nor will, nor efficacy therein, 
also neither understanding nor science. For a thing 
that has only one will has no divisibility. If it find 
not a contrary will, which gives occasion to it exer- 
cising motion, it stands still. A single thing can 
know nothing more than a one; and even though it 
is in itself good, yet it knows neither evil nor good, 
for it has nothing in itself to make this perceptible. 

10. And so then we can philosophize concerning 

i Dr. Stirling's rendering of Urstand. 



180 ON THE DIVINE INTUITION 

the will of God, and say : If the hidden God, who 
is a single existence and will, had not by his will 
brought himself out of himself, out of the eternal 
wisdom in the temperament, into divisibility of will, 
and had not introduced this same divisibility into 
an inclusiveness for a natural and creaturely life, 
and had this possibility of separation in life not 
found expression in strife ; how could then the hid- 
den will of God, which in itself is one only, be re- 
vealed to himself? How can there be in a single 
will a knowledge of itself? 

11. But if there be a divisibility in the one will, 
so that the divisibility disposes itself into centra and 
self-will, so that thus in that which is separated there 
is a will of its own, and thus in a single will unfath- 
omable and innumerable wills arise, like branches 
from a tree; then we see and understand that in 
such a divisibility each separated will brings itself 
into a special form, and that the conflict of the wills 
is about the form, so that one form in the partibility 
is not as another, and yet all have their subsistence 
in one ground. 

12. For a single will cannot break itself asunder 
in pieces, just as the soul (Gemiith) breaks not in 
pieces when it separates into an evil and good will- 
ing ; but the out-going of sense only separates into a 
willing of evil and of good, and the soul remains in 
itself entire, and suffers an evil and good willing to 
arise and dwell in it. 

13. Now saith Reason: Whereto is this good or 
useful, that with the good there must be an evil? 
Answer. That which is evil or of contrary will 



ON THE DIVINE INTUITION 181 

occasions the good or the will to press back towards 
its primal existence, as towards God, and the good, 
viz. the good will, to become desirous. For a thing 
that in itself is only good, and has no suffering 
(Qual) , desires nothing; for it knows nothing bet- 
ter in itself or for itself after which it could long. 

14. Thus then we can philosophize concerning the 
one good will of God, and say, that he can desire 
nothing in himself, for he has nothing in or for him- 
self which could give him anything. And therefore 
he brings himself out of himself into a divisibility, 
into centra, in order that a contrariety may arise in 
the emanation, viz. in that which has emanated, that 
the good may in the evil become perceptible, effec- 
tual, and capable of will; namely to will to separate 
itself from the evil, and to re-will to enter into the 
one will of God. 

15. But seeing the emanation of the one eternal 
will of God continually proceeds from himself to 
his manifestation, the good likewise, as the divine 
power, flows from the eternal One with this emana- 
tion, and enters also into the divisibility and into the 
centra of plurality. 

16. Now, the perpetual emanation of the will 
occasions the good by its motion to long for stand- 
still again, and to become desirous to repenetrate 
into the eternal One; and in such penetration into 
itself the One becomes mobile and desiref ul ; and in 
such working lies feeling, cognition and will. 

17. God, so far as he is called God, can will noth- 
ing but himself; for he has nothing before or after 
him that he can will. But if he will anything, that 



182 ON THE DIVINE INTUITION 

very same has emanated from him, and is a counter- 
stroke of himself, wherein the eternal will wills in 
its something. Now if the something were only a 
one, the will could have no exercise therein. And 
therefore the unfathomable will has separated itself 
into beginnings and carried itself into being, that 
it might work in something, as we have a similitude 
in the soul (Gemilth) of man. 

If the soul did not itself flow from itself, it would 
have no sense-perception; but if it had no sense- 
perception, neither would it have any knowledge of 
itself, nor of any other thing, and were incapable of 
doing or working. But the efflux of sense from the 
soul (which efflux is a counter stroke of the soul, in 
which the soul feels itself) endows the soul with will 
or desire, so that it introduces the senses into a some- 
thing, viz. into a centrum of an ego-hood, wherein 
the soul works through sense, and reveals and con- 
templates itself in its working through the senses. 

19. Now if in these centra of sense in the counter- 
stroke of the soul there were no contrarium, then all 
the centra of emanated sense were but a one ; in all 
the centra of sense but one single will, that did con- 
tinually but one and the same thing. How could 
then the wonders and powers of the divine wisdom 
became known by the soul (which is an image of 
divine revelation) and be brought into figures? 

20. But if there be a contrarium, as light and 
darkness, therein, then this contrarium is contrary 
to itself, and each quality occasions the other to 
bring itself into desire to will to fight against the 
other, and to dominate it. In which desire, sense 



ON THE DIVINE INTUITION 183 

and the soul is brought into a natural and creaturely 
ground to a will of its own, viz. to a domination in 
its something, or by its centrum over all the centra, 
as one sense of the soul over another. 

21. Hence struggle and anxiety, also contrary 
will, take their rise in the soul, so that the whole soul 
is thereby instigated to enter into a breaking of the 
senses, and of the self-will of the senses, as of the 
natural centra, and, passing out of the pain of re- 
bellion and strife, out of anxiety, to desire to sink 
into the eternal rest, as into God, from whence it 
sprang. 

22. And therefrom arise faith and hope, so that 
the anxious soul hopes for a deliverance, and longs 
to return to its origin again, viz. to God. 

23. So have we likewise to understand the divine 
manifestation. For all things have their first be- 
ginning from the emanation of the divine will, 
whether evil or good, love or sorrow; and yet the 
will of God is not a thing, neither nature nor crea- 
tion, wherein is no pain, sorrow nor contrary will. 
But from the efflux of the Word, as by the outgoing 
of the unfathomable mind (which is the wisdom of 
God or the great Mystery, where the eternal under- 
standing is in the temperament) , has flowed under- 
standing and knowledge ; and this efflux is a begin- 
ning of will, when the understanding has separated 
itself into form. Thus the forms, each in itself, be- 
came desirous to have also a counterstroke to its 
similarity. And this desire is a comprehendingness 
for selfhood or ownness, as for a place, for a some- 
thing. And through this something the Mysterium 



184 ON THE DIVINE INTUITION 

magnum, as the unnatural power, is become sub- 
stantial and natural; and the something has com- 
prehended itself so as to become an individual will. 

24. For this individual will is a ground of its 
selfhood, and shuts itself in as a desiring will, 
whence the magnetic impression for sharpness and 
hardness has taken its origin; and is a ground of 
darkness and of painful feeling, whence contrary 
will, anxiety and flight (sensibility) have their ori- 
gin ; and is a ground of Nature, from whence comes 
the plurality of the qualities, so that in such a con- 
trariety each will has arisen from the other, to sep- 
arate itself from pain, like as sense takes its rise 
from the soul, the soul through the senses being in 
continual anxiety, working, willing and breaking. 

25. In this divine emanation, in which the divine 
power breathes forth itself from itself, and brings 
and has brought itself into Nature and creation, we 
are to recognize two things. First, the eternal un- 
derstanding of the one good will, which is a temper- 
ament, and thus only introduces itself into a sensi- 
bility and activity for the manifestation of power, 
colours and virtue; that power and virtue may be 
realized in separability, in form, and the eternal wis- 
dom be revealed and pass into knowledge. From 
thence also the angelic, soulic and creaturely ground 
has proceeded, as well as thrones and dominions, to- 
gether with the visible world. 

26. And then, secondly, we are to understand the 
original will of Nature, viz. the comprehensibility 
of the centra, where each centrum in the divisibility 
shuts itself in a place to egoism and self-will as an 



ON THE DIVINE INTUITION 185 

individual mysterium or mind. Out of which 
springs unlikeness of will, showing how in these two 
a contrarium arises, for they are two in one. 

27. Namely (1) that which is inward from the 
origin of the divine power requires only a counter- 
stroke to its similarity, viz. something that is good, 
wherein the good, divine, emanated will may work 
and manifest itself. Then (2) the self -generated, 
individual, natural will in the place of the self -hood 
of the dark impression of the sharpness also re- 
quires a likeness, viz. a counter stroke through its 
own comprehensibility ; through which comprehen- 
sion it makes itself material, and requires nothing 
but its corporality as a natural ground. 

28. In these two we are to understand the good 
and evil will in all things. And it is herein rightly 
understood how the inward, spiritual ground of all 
beings arises from the divine power, and how in all 
things also an individual, natural desire arises; and 
how all the bodies of visible, sentient beings have 
their origin from the desire of Nature. 

29. Further, we should clearly observe that just 
as the individual, natural desire, which has a begin- 
ning, makes itself material and makes for itself a 
counterstroke, viz. a likeness, wherein it works; so 
also the divine ground and will through the compre- 
hensibility of its love makes for itself a counter- 
stroke and spiritual being, wherein the divine will 
works, and introduces the divine power into forms 
and separability for the manifestation of the divine 
power and glory. 

30. And in this world always two natures in one 



186 ON THE DIVINE INTUITION 

are to be understood : First, an eternal, divine and 
spiritual; and secondly, one that has a beginning, 
and is natural, temporal and perishable in self-will. 
For two kinds of will are found in one life : First, 
one that has a beginning and is natural, in which 
the will is an individual astrum, and inqualifies with 
all that is external, natural, elemental and sidereal ; 
and secondly, an eternal spiritual will, or eternal 
spiritual nature, which is a comprehension or com- 
prehended existence of the divine will, with which 
the divine will also makes for itself a counterstroke 
and being, wherein it works. And these two are 
understood in two principles: the first divine in a 
heavenly, and the second temporal in an earthly. 

31. And as the heavenly hangs on the earthly, 
so also does the earthly on the heavenly, and yet 
neither is the other. For the heavenly has a spir- 
itual nature, which is wholly an essential power, and 
permeates and pervades the earthly, and yet pos- 
sesses only its principle. And it gives power to the 
earthly, so that it obtains another new will, and 
longs after the heavenly. Which longing is a de- 
sire to go out from the vanity of Nature, whereof 
the Scripture says: All creatures do earnestly long 
with us to be freed from the vanity to which they 
are subjected against their will (Rom. viii. 19-22) . 

32. Understand it aright. The egressed Desire 
of the divine power for Nature, from which Nature 
and self-will has arisen, longs to be freed from the 
natural individual will. 

33. This Desire is laden with the impression of 
Nature against its will, for that God has introduced 



ON THE DIVINE INTUITION 187 

it thereinto. It shall at the end of this time be re- 
leased from the loaded vanity of Nature, and be 
brought into a crystalline, clear Nature. Then 
will be evident why God has shut it up in a time, 
and subjected it to pain [in the disposition] for suf- 
fering: Namely, that through the natural pain the 
eternal power might be brought into forms, shape 
and separability for perceptibility; and that crea- 
tures, viz. a creaturely lif e, might be revealed there- 
in in this time, and so be a play in the counterstroke 
to the divine wisdom. For through folly wisdom 
becomes manifest, because folly attributes power to 
its own self, and yet rests upon a [another] founda- 
tion and beginning, and has an end. 

34. Thus the endless life is displayed to view 
through folly, in order that therein a praise might 
arise to the honour of God, and that the eternal and 
permanent might become known in the mortal. 

35. And thus the first question put by Reason 
is answered, in that it supposes all things happen by 
chance, and that there is no God, seeing he suffers 
the righteous man to be in pain, fear and tribulation, 
and brings him at last to the grave, like the wicked 
man; so that it seems as if God interested himself 
in nothing, or as if there were no God, since Reason 
sees not, knows nor feels him. Therefore it is de- 
clared to it, that it (Reason) is in its own life only 
a counterstroke to the right life ; and if it find in it- 
self no hunger or desire after that from which in 
the beginning it arose, that it is in its own life only 
a foolishness and play, wherein wisdom brings its 
wonders to pass. 



188 ON THE DIVINE INTUITION 

36. For Reason sees in the wise man also such a 
folly according to the outward nature, and sees how 
God abandons this folly of the wise, that it must 
stand in shame and reproach before the self-willed, 
foolish subtlety, which nevertheless knows not its 
end. Therefore foolish Reason supposes there is 
no deliverer, and knows not how the wise man is de- 
livered in himself and freed from the inherited folly 
by immergence of his own will. For his own will, 
through the pain and opposition of the godless, en- 
ters into its breaking and into its willing nothing, 
and sinks again into its first origin, as into God's 
will, and therein is born anew. And that God is 
not served by the coarse, mortal flesh, that he should 
introduce deliverance into the animal, self-willed 
life ; but that to him the matter lies in this, that self- 
will should break, and sink again into God. Thus 
is the inward good nature comprehended in God's 
will; and on the mortal body is the more pain laid, 
that the individual, natural will may not enter again 
into a desire of its own for selfhood, and set itself 
up as a ruler over the inward ground, and destroy 
the true image of God. 

37. This, earthly Reason understands not; for 
it knows not how God dwells in it, and what God's 
will and nature is. It knows not that God dwells 
through it, and is so near it; and that its life is but 
a foolishness of wisdom, by means of which life 
wisdom manifests itself, that it may be known what 
wisdom is. Its will is gone from God into selfhood, 
and boasts itself of its own power, and sees not how 
its power has beginning and end, that it is but a 



ON THE DIVINE INTUITION 189 

play, by which mirror (play) wisdom beholds itself 
for a time in the folly of the wise; and, finally, 
through such pain of the godless, folly in the case of 
the wise breaks to pieces, in that they begin to hate 
the frail, foolish life, and to die with Reason, and to 
give up the will to God. 

38. This, earthly Reason regards as a folly, es- 
pecially when it sees that God also in the wise aban- 
dons their earthly folly, and lets the body of such 
folly, wherein the folly beheld itself, go down with- 
out help to the grave. Therefore it supposes this 
man has received no deliverance from God: Seeing 
he trusted in Him, his faith must certainly have been 
false, else He had surely delivered him in his life- 
time. 

39. Moreover, because it feels not its punishment 
immediately, it supposes there is no longer possible 
any serious earnest here; and knows not that the 
longer the more it comprehends itself in folly, and 
becomes in itself a strong source of eternal pain. 
So that, when for it the light of outer Nature per- 
ishes, wherein for a time it has strutted in selfhood, 
it then stands by itself in darkness and pain, so that 
its false, own desire is a mere rough, stinging, hard 
sharpness and contrary will. 

40. It hopes during this time in an external help, 
and brings itself into pleasure of its will, and holds 
that for its kingdom of heaven. But when for it 
the outer light is extinguished in death, it then 
stands in eternal despair, and neither sees any de- 
liverer about nor within it. 

41. But the wise man becomes in this time to 



190 ON THE DIVINE INTUITION 

himself a fool, and learns to hate his folly (which 
folly Reason regards as prudence) . Accordingly 
his wisdom (which the world regards as folly) must 
be a foolishness to Reason, at which it is scandal- 
ized. And so also God in the wise man hates the 
foolish mortal life, just as the wise man hates it him- 
self, in order that the true divine life may rule in 
him with the understanding. And therefore with 
God there is no regret for the mortal body of the 
wise man; for he comprehends his divine Ens in 
him in his spirit and will, and lets the body of folly 
with the foolish descend into its grave, till the day 
of the separation of all beings. 

42. And Reason understands not this ; therefore 
it is foolish. And a man should be a man, not ac- 
cording to folly, but according to God's Spirit ; and 
judge what is divine, not according to image-like 
[creaturely] Reason, for it is written: He that 
builds on the flesh (viz. on the mortal Reason of his 
own will) shall of the flesh inherit corruption; but 
he that builds on the spirit (viz. on the divine will) , 
and places his will in the hope of the divine promise, 
shall of the spirit inherit eternal life (Gal. vi. 8) . 



CHAPTER II 

Of the mind, will, and thoughts of human life. How 
it has its origin from the will of God, and how 
it is an object or an image of God, in which 
God wills, works, and dwells. 

1. Reason says: As the mind with the senses is 
a natural life with a beginning, which stands in a 
time and fragility; how may it then in this time be 
brought to the supersensible divine life? Or, how 
is the divine indwelling in lif e ? 

2. Answer. The life of man is a form of the 
divine will, and came from the divine inbreathing 
into the created image of man. It is the formed 
Word of the divine knowledge; but has been poi- 
soned by the counter-breathing of the devil, and of 
the fierce wrath of temporal Nature; so that the 
life's will has fashioned itself with the outward, 
earthly counterstroke of the mortal nature, and has 
come out of its temperament into separation of 
qualities. 

3. For these reasons it is found still in the earthly 
image, and is now to be considered in three prin- 
ciples. In the first Principle, by its true primal 
existence, it stands in the outgoing will of God, in 
the divine knowledge, which originally was a tem- 
perament, in which the divine power did work by 
sense. And therein is rightly understood a para- 

191 



192 ON THE DIVINE INTUITION 

dise or working of divine powers, as a perpetual 
formation of divine will. And by this budding is 
to be understood the outgoing of the good senses, 
whereby the divine wisdom formed itself in figure 
in a divine manner, and by such formation the di- 
vine understanding manifested itself through the 
outgoing of the life of sense. Hence it was rightly 
called an image of God, in which the divine will re- 
vealed itself. 

4. But when this life in the first principle was 
breathed upon in its image by the fierce wrathful 
devil, so that the devil whispered it, that it were 
good and profitable for it that the outgoing of the 
senses from the life should break itself off from the 
temperament, and should bring itself into an image 
of its own according to the properties of plurality, 
to prove dissimilarity, viz. to know and to be sensible 
of evil and good; 

5. Then the life's own will consented, and 
brought the senses as the outgoing Desire there- 
into ; it has introduced itself into desire for ownness, 
and impressed or comprehended itself in selfhood. 

6. And then immediately the life's understanding 
became manifest in [separated] qualities; Nature 
has taken the life captive in dissimilarity, and, set 
up her rule. Whence the life is become painful, 
and the inward divine ground of the good will and 
nature has been extinguished, that is, has become 
inoperative as to the creature. For the life's will 
broke itself off therefrom, and went into sensibility, 
out of unity into plurality; it strove against the 
Unity, viz. the eternal one rest, the one good. 



ON THE DIVINE INTUITION 193 

7. When this took place, the divine ground (viz. 
the second Principle or the wisdom of God, which 
in divine power with the out-breathing will of God 
had imprinted itself in the image-like life [of the 
soul or of the first, fiery principle], as in the coun- 
terstroke to God) was eclipsed in the false will. 
For the cause of the motion of the holy Essence had 
turned itself to earthliness, in which evil and good 
are in strife. 

8. Understand it: The eternal, unfathomable 
will of life had turned itself away from the divine 
Ens, and wished to rule in evil and good. And 
therefore the second principle, or the kingdom of 
God, is become extinguished for it ; and in the stead 
thereof is arisen the third Principle in its own fig- 
urative form, as the quality of the stars and of the 
four elements ; whence the body became coarse and 
animal, and the senses false and earthly. 

9. Life has thus lost the temperament, viz. the 
eternal rest, and has by its own desire made itself 
dark, painful, harsh, hard and rough. It has be- 
come a mere restlessness, and runs now in earthly 
power in an eternal ground, and seeks rest in that 
which is frail or fragile, but finds none ; for fragility 
is not life's equality. Therefore the life sets itself 
forcibly above the existence of this world, and dom- 
inates the mortal power of the stars and elements as 
an individual God of Nature. And it is by such 
domination become silly and foolish, so that in such 
earthly imagination (Bildung) and self-assumption 
it cannot recognize its ground and original state, 
wherein its eternal rest stood; and is rightly called 



194 ON THE DIVINE INTUITION 

foolish. For it has brought itself out of the divine 
Ens into an earthly (animal) ens, and placed itself 
in a fragile being; and will rule in that which never- 
theless perishes for it, and passes away quickly like 
a smoke. 

10. And when that breaks, over which it has ruled 
for a while, then the life remains in its contrariety 
in the first principle, in darkness ; and is nothing else 
than an everlasting, unquenchable, painful fire- 
source, as the devils also are such. 

11. To the aid of this captive life came again the 
great love of God; and immediately after such 
downfall inbreathed itself again into the inward ens, 
viz. into the deadened nature of divine quality; and 
gave itself to the life for an object, introduced itself 
as a new fountain of divine unity, love and rest into 
the faded divine Ens, and revealed itself therein; 
from which the life is able to draw and its pain and 
restlessness in the centra of ownness to extinguish. 

12. Further, this new fountain of divine love and 
unity has, by its outflow in Christ, embodied itself 
in the true life of all the three principles of human 
quality ; and has entered into the image-like senses, 
viz. into life's natural, creaturely, dissentient, im- 
age-like will, and assumed humanity; and has shat- 
tered egoism and self-will by the influence of the 
one love of God, as by the eternal One ; and turned 
life's will inwards again to the eternal One, to the 
temperament, whereby the devil's introduced will 
was destroyed, and life's painfulness brought into 
the true rest. And has broken open the shutting-in, 
viz. death, and restored again the divine paradisaic 



ON THE DIVINE INTUITION 195 

budding with the holy senses and workings ; and led 
the holy life through the confining of death, and 
made death and the devil's will a reproach. And 
has thus powerfully demonstrated how the eternal 
One can predominate over plurality and particu- 
larity, that the might of what is image-like may not 
be a God, but the might of what is super- and unim- 
age-like rule all. For what is image-like is only a 
counterstroke to the un-image-like will of God, 
through which the will of God works. 

13. But seeing the great love of God in Christ 
is thus come to the aid of human lif e in earthly form, 
and has made for us poor men in the life of the hu- 
manity of Christ an open gate of grace to the divine 
entrance ; therefore the matter now lies in this, that 
the life's will taken captive in its image-like exist- 
ence should abandon again the earthly, viz. egoism 
and self-will, and immerse itself wholly and solely 
in this embodied grace (which pressed from one, as 
from the first man, upon all, Rom. v. 18) ; and take 
to itself this grace, and in virtue of such acceptance 
and divine union sink with the resigned life's will 
into the supersensible, superfathomable, eternal 
One, as into the first ground of life's beginning, and 
give itself up again to the ground from which life 
sprang forth ; then it is again in its eternal place, in 
the temperament, in the true rest. 

14. Reason says: How can a man do this, seeing 
the Scripture saith (1 Cor. xv. 45; Gen. i. 28) : The 
first man was made a natural life, to rule over all 
the creatures and beings of this world. The life 
must therefore introduce desire into earthly quality. 



196 ON THE DIVINE INTUITION 

Answer. Human life is placed in a counterstroke 
to the divine will, in and through which counter- 
stroke God wills; and the earthly creatures are 
placed in a counterstroke to human life, in and 
through which counterstroke man was to will. 
Man's will was with God's will to will, and rule over 
all natural and creaturely life. Not in animal but 
in divine essence was it to stand. Though man was 
placed with life in Nature, yet his nature was a tem- 
perament, and his life a mansion of divine will. 

15. But because life must stand during this time 
in earthly essence, and cannot be rid of it, we must 
look at the threefold nature of the life according to 
the three principles; by which principle of the life 
man may plunge into the supersensible being of 
God, and how this may be done. 

16. Christ said: Without me ye can do nothing 
(John xv. 5) . No man can of his own power reach 
the supreme ground, unless he sink his inmost 
ground of the first principle, according to the life's 
image-like nature, in the embodied grace of God; 
and, in accordance with the same ground, stand still 
from his own being in divine hope, and give himself 
up wholly with the will to God, in such a way that 
his will no longer wills to speak according to this 
ground, save what God speaks and wills through 
this ground ; then he is at the highest goal. 

17. If it be possible for him to stand still an hour 
or less from his own inner willing and speaking, 
then will the divine will speak into him. By which 
inspeaking God's will embraces his will in Himself, 
and speaks into the image-like, natural, external 



ON THE DIVINE INTUITION 197 

Reason-life; and dissolves and illuminates the 
earthly imagination of Reason's will, so that imme- 
diately the supersensible divine life and will buds 
and incentres itself in Reason's will. 

18. For as little as the life's own will can, in self- 
ness and will turned away from God, stand still in 
Nature a moment from its working, unless it sink 
down beyond all Nature ; so little also can the divine 
speaking, in the life resigned to the ground, stand 
still from its working. 

19. For if the life stand still from its own will, 
it is in the abyss of Nature and creation, in the eter- 
nal, divine utterance ; and hence God speaks therein. 

20. For from God's speaking the life has pro- 
ceeded and come into body, and is nothing else than 
an image-like will of God. Now if its own imagi- 
nation and will stand still, the divine imagination 
and will arises. For whatever is will-less is with 
the Nothing but one thing, and is out of or beyond 
all Nature, which ungroundedness is God himself. 

21. Seeing then the Unground or God is an eter- 
nal speaking, viz. a breathing forth of himself, the 
Unground accordingly is inspoken into the resigned 
life; for the breathing of the Unground speaks 
through the stationary ground of the life. For the 
life has arisen from the divine breathing, and is a 
likeness of the divine breathing, therefore one like- 
ness seizes the other. As we understand in the 
case of the life's senses, which are such an issue from 
the breathing of the soul, as the soul is an issue and 
counterstroke from the divine soul of the divine 
knowledge. 



198 ON THE DIVINE INTUITION 

22. Now as God, by his breathing forth of his 
eternal wisdom and knowledge, has revealed him- 
self by Nature and creation, both by the inward holy 
life, by the life of angels and men, and has intro- 
duced his will of his knowledge into form for re- 
utterance through a formed divulged mode; as also 
by Nature and its re-breathing forth of the crea- 
tures of the visible world, and has always made the 
external, uttered by Nature, subject to the inward 
principle, so that the inward should rule through 
the external corporeal, and be a spirit of the ex- 
ternal : 

23. Know, then, that in like manner, the intro- 
verted, new-born life of man, in divine power and 
might, can and should rule over the external Rea- 
son-life of stars and elements. And if this be not 
done — viz. that the inward eternal life in man, in 
divine power and light, rule over the external, 
earthly, astral life of the mortal desire, and break 
the will of the earthly desire (wherein lies the ser- 
pent's image) — then there is not yet any new birth 
or divine will manifest in such life and working, and 
such a man (as long as he stands in the earthly will 
alone) is no child of heaven. For the divine scientia 
is transformed into earthly, animal quality by the 
individual imagination of the false will ; and is as to 
the body an evil beast, and as to the soul an averse, 
false will, which wills not with God — after the man- 
ner of the devils, who likewise stand in their own im- 
agination of sensual knowledge. 

24. Therefore Christ said (Matt. xii. 30) : He 
that gather eth not with me scatter eth. That is, 



ON THE DIVINE INTUITION 199 

whosoever works, wills and acts not with the em- 
bodied divine grace, which God through Christ has 
revealed and offers, but works by natural individual 
will, he disperses not only the divine order of the 
senses, but scatters also his works into false ground. 

25. Consider a parable of the sun. If a herb 
hath not sap, the sun's rays scorch it ; but if it hath 
sap, the sun's rays warm it, whereby it grows. So 
also in the life of essence in man. Hath that life 
not ens from God's gentleness and love, viz. from 
the eternal One, then it impresseth itself into a 
fierce, fiery sharpness, so that the mind becomes 
wholly rough, hungry, covetous, envious and sting- 
ing. And such false sense and will proceeds then 
from the life into the body, and into all its ways and 
works. «■-. .f. k ./ 

26. Such a fiery, covetous, envious nature with 
the life's sharp sense scatters and destroys all that 
is good. There is danger in all it has to do with. 
For it carries its poisonous rays thereinto, and will 
draw all to itself, and bring its poison thereinto, viz. 
hungry covetousness. But if it be that the fiery life 
can eat of divine love, then it is a similitude how a 
light presses forth from fire: Thus the right life 
presses forth from the fiery nature with a new spirit 
and will of divine love from within ; and is no longer 
taking, as the fire's nature is, but giving. For the 
will of love gives itself, as light from fire, which 
gives itself to all things, and produces in all some- 
thing that is good. 

27. If the sun did shine no more in the deep of 
the world, then would the spiritus mundi in the 



200 ON THE DIVINE INTUITION 

sharpness of the stars, in the sulphureous, mercurial 
nature in the four elements, be wholly stern, rough, 
dry, harsh, thick, dark, and hard. Hence all life 
in the elements would perish, and it would soon be 
seen what hell and God's wrath are. 

28. And thus in like manner as the outer man is 
a limus of the external elemental world, whose life 
has its subsistence in the power and virtue of the 
sun and stars, and the body, as also the earth, is a 
coagulation of the spiritus mundi; and if that were 
unable to have in its food the sun's power of light 
and of love, it would become wholly evil, fiery, and 
mortal, and the external life would necessarily 
perish : 

29. So also, in like manner, the soul is a limus of 
the inward spiritual world from the Mysteriwm 
magnum, viz. from the issue and counterstroke of 
the divine knowledge, which must receive its nour- 
ishment from the Mysterium magnum of the divine 
power and knowledge. Now if it cannot have the 
ens of divine love for its food, so that it breaks itself 
off from the unground, as from resignation or re- 
nunciation, then it becomes sharp, fiery, dark, 
rough, stinging, envious, hostile, rebellious, and an 
entire restlessness itself; and introduces itself into 
a mortal, dying, fierce source, which is its damna- 
tion, wherein it goes to destruction, as befell the 
devil, and likewise befalls the wicked. 

30. But if such a fire-source can again attain and 
receive in itself divine love, viz. the essential light 
of God, then this fire-source of the soul becomes 
transformed into a kingdom of joy, into praise to 



ON THE DIVINE INTUITION 201 

God. But without will that has turned round, that 
stands still from its own impression and shutting-in, 
this is not possible. For the light of the sun cannot 
so work in a hard stone as in herbs and trees, for 
the water is compacted and coagulated in the stone 
into a hard impression. 

31. And thus it is to be understood with regard 
to the soul's false own will and divine gentleness, so 
that in such a covetous, envious fire-greed the divine 
gentleness accomplishes no working. Hence Christ 
truly said (John vi. 53) : The life of man which 
should not eat the bread that is come from heaven 
to give life to the world, has no life in it. Thereby 
he indicates the essential love which God has mani- 
fested in him (in Christ) by a new fountain for re- 
freshment of the poor withered soul. The soul that 
should not eat thereof cannot attain the divine 
Light, and were without divine life. And indeed 
he calls himself (John viii. 12) the Light of the 
world. Item, in the Psalms : A Light that shines 
in the darkness, which changes the darkness into 
light (Ps. cxii. 4). 



CHAPTER III 

Of the natural ground. How Nature is a counter- 
stroke to the divine knowledge, whereby the 
eternal (one) will with the unfathomable, su- 
pernatural knowledge makes itself perceptible, 
visible, effectual, and desireful. And what 
Mysterium magnum is. How all is from, 
through, and in God. How God is so near all 
things, and fills all. 

A highly precious gate, for the reader that loveth 
God to well consider. 

John i. 1-3 runs thus: In the beginning was the 
Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word 
was God. The same was in the beginning with 
God. All things were made by him, and without 
him was not anything made that was made. 

1. The beginning of all beings was the Word as 
the breath of God; and God was the eternal One of 
eternity, and likewise remains so in eternity. But 
the Word is the efflux of the divine will or of the 
divine knowledge. As the senses flow from the 
soul, and yet the soul is but a one ; so it was with the 
eternal One in the efflux of the will, that is to say: 
In the beginning was the Word. For the Word as 
the efflux of the will of God is the eternal beginning, 
and remains so eternally. For it is the revelation 
of the eternal One, by and through which the divine 

202 



ON THE DIVINE INTUITION 203 

power is brought into a knowledge of somewhat. 
By the Word we understand the revealed will of 
God; and by the word God we mean the hidden 
God, viz. the eternal One from which the Word eter- 
nally springs forth. 

2. Thus the Word is the efflux of the divine One, 
and yet God himself as his revelation. 

3. This efflux flows from God; and what has 
flowed forth is wisdom, beginning and cause of all 
powers, colours, virtues and qualities. 

4. From such a revelation of powers, in which the 
will of the eternal One contemplates itself, flows 
the understanding and the knowledge of the some- 
thing (Ichts), 1 as the eternal will contemplates it- 
self in the something (Ichts) , and in wisdom intro- 
duces itself into delight in a likeness and image. 

5. This image is the Mysterium magnum, viz. the 
creator of all beings and creatures ; for it is the sep- 
arator in the efflux of the will, which makes the will 
of the eternal One separable; it is the separability 
in the will, from which powers and qualities arise. 

6. These powers again are in efflux of themselves, 
each power bringing itself into individual will ac- 
cording to the virtue of that same power. From 
thence arises the multiplicity of wills, and from this 
also the creaturely life of eternity has taken its ori- 
gin, viz. angels and souls. And yet it cannot be said 
that by this a Nature or creation is understood, but 
the eternal imaged existence of the divine word and 
will, as the Spirit of God has in such a counterstroke, 

i Ichts the opposite of Nichts (nothing) is "I," self-consciousness. — 
Hegel, Hist, of Phil, vol. iii. p. 286. 



204 ON THE DIVINE INTUITION 

in the powers of wisdom, sported with himself in 
such formation of similitude. 

7. As the mind of man in the understanding in- 
troduces itself by the senses into a counterstroke of 
an exact likeness, and by sense flows forth and dis- 
poses into images, which images are the thoughts 
of the mind, wherein the will of the mind works, and 
thus by desire brings itself into a sharpness, as into 
a magnetic appropriation, from which joy and sor- 
row arise ; 

8. So also, in regard to the eternal mind of per- 
ceptibility, we are to understand that the outgoing 
of the one will of God has, through the Word, in- 
troduced itself into separability, and the separabil- 
ity has introduced itself into receptibility, as into 
desire and craving for its self -revelation, passing 
out of the Unity into plurality. 

9. Desire is the ground and beginning of the na- 
ture of perceptibility of the particular will. For 
therein is the separability of the Unity brought into 
receptibility, whence the separabilities of the wills 
are brought into perceptibility of a self-hood, 
wherein the true, creaturely, perceptible, angelic, 
and soulic life is understood. 

10. For the will of the eternal One is impercep- 
tible, without tendency to anything; for it has noth- 
ing to which it could tend, save only towards itself. 
Therefore it brings itself out of itself, and carries 
the efflux of its unity into plurality, and into as- 
sumption of selfhood, as of a place of a Nature, 
from which qualities take their rise. For every 



ON THE DIVINE INTUITION 205 

quality has its own separator and maker within it, 
and is in itself entire, according to the quality of 
the eternal Unity. 

11. Thus the separator of each will develops in 
its turn qualities from itself, from which the infinite 
plurality arises, and through which the eternal One 
makes itself perceptible, not according to the unity, 
but according to the efflux of the unity. But the 
efflux is carried to the greatest sharpness with mag- 
netic receptivity, to the nature of fire ; in which fiery 
nature the eternal One becomes majestic and a light. 
Thereby [by fire] the eternal power becomes de- 
sireful and effectual, and [fire] is the original con- 
dition of the sensitive life, where in the Word of 
power, in the efflux, an eternal sensitive life has its 
origin. For if life had no sensitiveness, it would 
have no will nor efficacy; but pain makes it effectual 
and capable of will. And the light of such kindling 
through fire makes it joyous, for it is an anointment 
of painfulness. 

12. From this eternal operation of the sensation 
and sense-element, which very working has from 
eternity introduced itself into Nature and qualities, 
the visible world with all its host sprang, and was 
brought into a creaturely being. For the eternity 
of such working to fire, light and darkness has with 
visible world carried itself into a counterstroke, and 
made the separator in all the powers of the ema- 
nated being a steward of Nature, by whom the eter- 
nal will rules, makes, forms and shapes all things. 

13. We can, therefore, in no wise say that God's 



206 ON THE DIVINE INTUITION 

essence is something far off, which possesses a spe- 
cial abode or place ; for the abyss of Nature and cre- 
ation is God himself. 

14. The visible world with its host of creatures is 
nothing else than the emanated Word which has dis- 
posed itself into qualities, as in qualities the particu- 
lar will has arisen. And with the receptibility of 
the Will the creaturely lif e arose ; which lif e has in 
the beginning of this world introduced itself into a 
receptivity for a creaturely ground, which the sep- 
arator has separated according to the quality, and 
brought to a will of its own after such a fashion. 
And with the self-will of such desire substance or 
body of its likeness and quality has arisen to each re- 
ceptivity; whereby the separator has signed itself 
and made itself visible, as is to be seen in every life. 

15. In this counterstroke of the divine will we 
are to understand two kinds of life, viz. an eternal 
and a temporal. That which is eternal is in the 
Eternal, and arises from the eternal Word. It 
stands at the basis of the eternal spiritual world, in 
the Mysterium magnum of the divine counterstroke, 
and constitutes the intellective life at the basis of 
the eternal fire and light. 

16. The inmost ground is a spark of the ema- 
nated will of God through the eternal divine breath- 
ing, and is united with God's Word to will nothing 
but what the one will of God wills through such em- 
anation. 

17. It is nothing else than a mansion of divine 
will, through which the divine will reveals itself; 
and is revealed to no peculiarity of individual will. 



ON THE DIVINE INTUITION 207 

but only to the instrument of the divine will, by 
which this chooses to perform its marvellous works. 
It is the separator of the divine will, an instrument 
of God, into which the divine will has fashioned it- 
self so as to be a wonder-worker of omnipotence and 
glory, by which he will rule all things. Wherefore 
also the divine understanding was given to it. 

18. The other life is a primal efflux of the sep- 
arator of all powers, and is called the soul of the 
outer world. This life became creaturely in the 
emanated qualities, and is a life of all the creatures 
of the visible world, whereby the separator or cre- 
ator of this world fashions itself and makes a like- 
ness of the spiritual world, in which the power of 
the inward spiritual world forms, shapes and be- 
holds itself. 

19. For the spiritual world of fire, light and dark- 
ness is hidden in the visible elemental world, and 
works through the visible world, and by the sep- 
arator imprints itself with its efflux in all things, ac- 
cording to each thing's kind and quality. Accord- 
ing as each several thing is of a kind and quality, 
such a quality does it receive from the separator of 
the inward spiritual power. Not for a possession 
and individual power does the visible receive the 
invisible, that the outer might thereby be trans- 
formed into the inner. No ; that is not so. The in- 
ward power fashions itself in the way we understand 
this in the powers of herbs, trees and metals, that 
their external spirit is only an instrument of the in- 
ward spirit or of the inward power, whereby the in- 
ward power imprints itself in the external spirit. 



208 ON THE DIVINE INTUITION 

20. We understand indeed in such powers of 
growing things three kinds of spiritus in different 
centra, but in one corpus. The first and external 
spiritus is the coarse sulphur, salt and mercury, 
which is a substance of four elements, or of the stars 
according to the property of their roughness. It 
makes the corpus, and impresses itself or compacts 
itself into a substance, or draws that which is in- 
ternal out of the spiritual separator into itself, as 
also the elements from without, and coagulates it- 
self therewith ; whence immediately the signature or 
sign is effected by the separator. It forms the vis- 
ible corpus according to the property of the greatest 
power of the spiritus mundi, viz. according to the 
constellation of the stars or property of the planets 
and now enkindled elements. 

21. The second spiritus, which has a centrum of 
its own, is found in the oil of sulphur, which is called 
the fifth essence, viz. a root of the four elements. 
This spiritus is the softening and joy of the coarse, 
painful spirit of sulphur and salt; and receives its 
nourishment, firstly, from within, from the light of 
Nature, from the efflux of spiritual gentleness, from 
the inward spiritual fire and light. And, secondly, 
it receives its nourishment from without, from the 
sun and from the subtle power of the spiritus mundi, 
and is the true cause of growing life, a joy of Na- 
ture, as is the sun in the elements. 

22. The third spiritus is the tincture, a counter- 
stroke of the divine Mysterium magnum, in which 
all powers are in equality, and is rightly called para- 
dise or divine delight. It is a mansion of divine 



ON THE DIVINE INTUITION 209 

power, a mansion of the eternal soul, whence all ex- 
ternal powers spring, after the manner of air from 
fire. 

23. For the tincture is nothing else than a spir- 
itual fire and light, in which fire and fight is a single 
and united being. But because it has within it its 
separator, as the emanated divine will to manifesta- 
tion, it is the highest reason for which the first sepa- 
ration of qualities comes about in the existence of 
this world, and belongs by its own quality to eter- 
nity. For its origin is the holy power of God. And 
it has a special centrum, viz. the most inward ground 
of the creature, which indeed is hidden to the mortal 
creature on this account, that man brought false 
will against it. Hence arose the curse of the earth 
at the fall of man. Yet this high, holy principle in 
its own centrum presses forth through all the beings 
of this world, and flows forth into the outer powers, 
as the sun into the elements. But the creature can- 
not touch the centrum of this power, unless it be 
done by divine permission, as comes to pass in the 
new birth. 

24. Such a revelation is seen in all living and 
growing things. All things have their subsistence 
in these three principles or beginnings. You see 
an example in a herb of the earth, which has its 
nourishment from within and without, viz. from 
the earth, and from without from the sun and 
stars, whereby the spiritus of the earth together 
with the external spiritus fashions itself. When 
the herb sprouts forth, it is in such power that 
this is realized. Thus the outward separator in 



210 ON THE DIVINE INTUITION 

sulphur, salt and mercury signs itself externally 
with the shape and form of the herb; for it is 
the herb's motion and sensation, and makes itself 
corporeal. 

25. So that when I see a herb standing, I may 
say with truth: This is an image of the Earth- 
spirit, in which the upper powers rejoice, and 
regard it as their child; for the Earth-spirit is 
but one being with the upper, outward powers. 
And when the herb is grown up, it blossoms; and 
with the blossom the oleous spirit signs itself with 
beautiful colours. And with the lovely smell of 
the blossom, the tincture or the third principle 
signs itself. 

26. Here then we understand that the inward, 
hidden spirit of the elements has revealed itself, 
and brings itself also into the form of the fruit. 
For the earth would have no such smell, neither 
colours nor such virtue, if the hidden power of 
the divine efflux did not manifest itself. 

27. So also with metals, which outwardly are 
a coarse corpus of sulphur, mercury and salt, 
wherein consists the growth; but in their inward 
ground they are a beautiful clear corpus, in which 
the ideal light of Nature shines from the divine 
efflux. In this lustre is to be understood the 
tincture and great power, how the hidden power 
makes itself visible. It cannot be said of such 
power or virtue that it is elemental, as neither is 
the power of the blossom so. The elements are 
only a mansion and counterstroke of the inward 
power, a cause of the motion of the tincture. 



ON THE DIVINE INTUITION 211 

28. For power proceeds from the tincture 
through motion of the coarse elemental spirit, and is 
carried thereby into sensation, viz. into taste and 
smell. 

29. For smell is nothing but the sensation of the 
tincture, through which the efflux of divine power 
reveals itself, and thus assumes perceptibility. The 
sharpness of smell is indeed elemental, but the true 
power and virtue in the sharpness of the smell is 
the tincture. For the motion of a thing is not the 
highest reason of power, but that to which the cause 
of the motion is due. 

30. The physician uses a fragrant herb for his 
medicaments; but the smell, that is, the sharpness 
of the smell, is not the cure which cureth the 
patient in his sickness. But that is the cure, from 
which such balsam or smell arises, viz. the tincture, 
which imprints itself in such balsam. 

31. Christ said to the fig-tree: Be thou withered 
(Matt. xxi. 19) . But the external, audible, human 
word, or the sound, was not the power by which it 
was done. But the power was that from whence 
the word came. Else, if the external human soul 
did it, other men could do it too. 

32. The like also is to be understood concerning 
faith. Confession and assent in respect to a thing 
is not true faith, much less is science so. But 
that is faith, from which the confession proceeds, 
viz. the revealed Spirit of God in the inward ground 
of the soul, which by the confession frames itself 
in the pronounced! word and makes this visible 
outwardly, and works with the visible elements of 



212 ON THE DIVINE INTUITION 

faith and exhibits itself outwardly. So that we 
understand that God's Spirit co-operates in the 
work of faith, just as it works with and through 
the power of the elemental world, and makes itself 
visible through the existence of this world with a 
counterstroke. 

33. So that, as regards everything I look upon, 
be it evil or good, I can with truth say: Here, by 
this thing, has the hidden spirit of the separator 
of all beings shaped itself into a property, and made 
for itself here an object or image according to its 
efflux, either according to evil or good; all accord- 
ing to the properties of Nature, according to heat 
or cold, according to harsh, bitter, sweet or sour, 
or however that may be. And in all such forma- 
tion there is only outwardly such an elemental 
nature, viz. such a sulphur and salt; but in the 
inward ground, in the tincture, it is good and 
profitable, and belongs to its likeness for the nour- 
ishment of life, which by the astral and elemental 
nature stands in all properties according to its 
external ground. 

34. Every particular thing, be is herb, grass, tree, 
beast, bird, fish, worm, or whatsoever it be, is of 
use, and has proceeded from the separator of all 
beings, viz. from the Word or separable will of God, 
by which the separator of each thing's quality has 
made for itself a likeness or image in which it 
works. 

35. For this visible world with all its host and 
being is nothing but an objective representation of 
the spiritual world, which spiritual world is hidden 



ON THE DIVINE INTUITION 213 

in this material, elemental world, like as the tincture 
in herbs and metals. 

36. And as the tincture with its virtue fashioneth 
itself in all things with its efflux and makes itself 
visible, so that we may see and know by the figure, 
as well as by the colours and smell, what manner 
of separator or efflux of divine will has emanated in 
the tincture from the Mysterium magnum; so like- 
wise we may recognize in the visible world, in sun, 
stars, elements and all creatures, the inward ground 
from which they arose. 

37. For no thing or being is come from afar to 
its place, but in the place where it grows is its 
ground. The elements have their cause, from 
which they arise, in themselves; the stars also 
have their chaos, wherein they stand, in them- 
selves. 

38. The elements are nothing but an image-like, 
moving existence of what is invisible and non- 
moving. 

39. The stars likewise are an efflux of the quali- 
ties of the spiritual world, according to the separa- 
tion of the separator, whose ground is the Word or 
the separable will of God. 

40. The being and motion of the elements is 
fire, air, water and earth, wherein is thick and 
thin, moist and dry, hard and soft, and these are 
united together in one substance. Not that each is 
from a particular origin, but they all proceed from 
a single ground, and that place where they have 
arisen is everywhere. We have only to conceive 
how at one place there may have been a greater 



214 ON THE DIVINE INTUITION 

enkindling according to one quality than at another 
place, whereby the motion has become greater, and 
of material things in such form and substance more 
have been produced than at another place. As is 
to be understood by the material things of the 
earth, as also by the water and air, how a difference 
exists at each pole, or at each position above the 
earth. Whence also the difference of manners and 
of virtues, as well as of governments, laws and 
creatures. 

41. But the differences of such qualities have all 
arisen from iheMysterium magnum, by the motion 
once for all of the powers of all beings, as when the 
one will of all beings puts itself in motion at once, 
and brought itself out of non-perceptibility into 
perceptibility and separability of powers, and 
made the eternal Power effectual and desireful, 
so that in each power a counterstroke as an in- 
dividual desire has arisen. This same desire in the 
counterstroke of the powers has developed itself in 
its turn out of itself into a counterstroke, whence 
the desire of such efflux is become acute, strong 
and excessive, and has coagulated and brought itself 
into material things. 

42. And as the efflux of the inward powers has 
been from light to darkness, from sharpness and 
gentleness, from the nature of fire and light, so 
has been the origination of material things. The 
further the efflux of a power has extended, the more 
outward and coarse does the matter become; for 
one counterstroke has proceeded out of another, 
unto finally the coarse earth. 



ON THE DIVINE INTUITION 215 

43. But we must deduce correctly the ground 
of this philosophy, and indicate whence hard and 
soft have taken their origin. This we recognize 
in metals. For every matter which is hard, as are 
metals and stones, as also wood, herbs and the like, 
has within it a very noble tincture and high spirit 
of power. As also is to be recognized in the bones 
of creatures, how the noblest tincture according 
to the power of the Light, or the greatest sweetness, 
is in the marrow of the bones; and, on the other 
hand, in the blood there is only a fiery tincture, 
viz. in sulphur, salt and mercury. This is under- 
stood thus: 

44. God is the eternal One, or the greatest 
gentleness [stillness,] so far as he exists in himself 
independently of his motion and manifestation. 
But in his motion he is called a God in trinity, 
that is, a triune Being, where we speak of three 
and yet but of one, and in accordance with which 
he is called the eternal Power and Word. This is 
the precious and supreme ground, and thus to be 
considered: The divine will shuts itself in a place 
to selfhood, as to power, and becomes active in 
itself; but also by its activity goes forth, and 
makes for itself an object, viz. wisdom, through 
which the ground and origin of all beings has 
arisen. 

45. In like manner know this: All that is soft, 
gentle and thin in the existence of this world is 
emanating and self -giving; and its ground and 
origin is in accordance with the Unity of eternity, 
the Unity perpetually emanating from itself. And 



216 ON THE DIVINE INTUITION 

indeed in the very nature of thinness or rarity, as in 
water and air, we understand no sensation or pain, 
so far as that nature is one in itself. 

46. But whatever is hard and impressing, as 
bones, wood, herbs, metals, fire, earth, stones, and 
the like material things, — therein is the image of 
divine power and motion, and shuts itself up with 
its separator (viz. the efflux of divine desire) against 
the coarseness, as a noble jewel or sparkle of divine 
power. And it is hard and fiery on this account, 
that it hath its own ground of divine inclusion, as 
where the eternal One introduces itself continually 
into a ground of threef oldness for motion of powers, 
and yet shuts itself up against the efflux, as against 
the introduction of the particular will of Nature, 
and with the power of the Unity works through 
Nature. 

47. And so it is to be understood in regard to 
the noble tincture. Where it is noblest, there it is 
most of all shut up with the hardness. For the 
Unity is involved in it in a mobility, as in a sensation 
of activity, and therefore it is hidden, but in 
thinness or rarity it is involved not in such sensation, 
but is one with all things. As indeed water and 
air are one with all things, and are in all things. 
But the dry water is the true pearly foundation, 
in which the subtle power of the working of 
the Unity is in the centre. To ours, who are 
worthy of this, it is hereby intimated, that they 
should not give their attention to the soft and 
yielding apart from the fiery nature, to seek 



ON THE DIVINE INTUITION 217 

the mystery therein. Understand this mystery 
thus: 

48. That the soft and thin arises from the Unity, 
from its emanation, from the Mysterium magnum, 
and is nearest to the Unity; and, on the other 
hand, the noblest ground of divine revelation, 
both in power and operation, lies in the fiery 
hardness, and is a dry unity or a temperament, 
wherein again is contained the separability of all 
powers. For, where powers are comprised not in 
the unity of a will, there the will is divided, and 
no great power is to be understood in that 
thing. Which ought well to be observed by the 
physicians, that they should not look to the coarse 
spiritus of strong smell, and regard that as 
the true balsam; although it is present therein, 
and so is the tincture therein very mobile and 
evolant. 

49. The spiritus or spiritual essences of the strong 
power in smell must be brought into the tempera- 
ment, into unity, and not be. flying from it, whereby 
men attempt to cure with salt, as with the sharp- 
ness of fire, and give to the patient soul without 
spirit. 

50. The soul of such balsams is separated in the 
qualities; each one gives itself in its great joy 
separately, but in separation they are too rebellious. 
They unite not life's enmity and division, but kindle 
life's division more. 

51. Shut them up and make them one, so that 
they all have one will in love, and you have the 



218 ON THE DIVINE INTUITION 

pearl of the whole world. To provoke to wrath 
causes pride and strife, which is to be recognized 
in all things. 

52. A prisoner is comforted only by his release, 
until he place his will in hope, and compose himself 
with patience; and so at last his restlessness falls 
into hope, into the temperament, and he learns in 
such hope to become humble. Then, if one tells him 
of his release, he rejoices. 

53. Therefore, ye physicians, observe it, that is 
your pearl, if you can understand this, the meaning 
is internal and external. 



CHAPTER IV 

Of the In and Out. How the eternal will of God 
carries itself outwards and into perceptibility, 
inwards and again into the One. 

Here may be understood to what end the being of this 
world was created, and what purpose the creaturely 
ground serves. Furtlier, to what end joy and sor- 
row have become manifest; and how God is so near 
all things. 

1. John i. 11-13 runs thus: He (Jesus Christ) 
came unto his own, and his own received him not. 
But as many as received him, to them gave he power 
to become children of God, even to them that 
believe on his name : which were born, not of blood, 
nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, 
but of God. 

2. In these words we have precious ground 
of divine revelation, viz. the eternal In and Out. 
For they speak of this, how the hidden divine 
eternal Word of the divine power of the Unity 
came forth into the emanated, natural, creaturely, 
image-like Word, viz. into humanity, into his 
own. 

3. For the emanated, image-like creaturely Word 
is the ever-speaking Word's property. And it is 
thereby clearly signified that his own, or the 
averse, image-like, particular will, received him 

219 



220 ON THE DIVINE INTUITION 

not. This individual, image-like will had arisen 
from its own ground, viz. from flesh and blood of 
the self-ful nature of man and woman, that is, in 
the separator of the emanated will, where the 
eternal will had confined itself in ownership, and 
would go forth and rule in personal power and 
might. 

4. This received not the eternal Word (which, 
as an outflow of divine grace, again came forth 
to the averse will), for it would be an individual 
lord. But the will which has turned round, so that 
it has been born anew in the divine outflow of love, 
to that gave he power to become God's child. For 
it is not the natural, individual will can inherit the 
divine childship, but only that which, united with 
the Unity, is one with all things, in which God 
himself works and wills. 

5. Wherein we clearly understand how the in- 
ward ground has extroverted itself and made itself 
visible, and is a peculiar possession of God, as an 
efflux of divine power and will. 



THE END. 



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